
Class 15 \ 



Book , M-3- 



DEATH, THE GATE OF LIFE? 

(MORS JANUA VITAE?) 



A DISCUSSION OF CERTAIN COMMUNICATIONS 

PURPORTING TO COME FROM 

FREDERIC W. H. MYERS 



BY 

HA. DALLAS 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

PROFESSOR W. F. BARRETT, F.R.S. 




*' The veil 
Is rending, and the Voices of the day 
Are heard across the Voices of the dark." 

TENNYSON. 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 Fifth Avenue 



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$ 



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DEATH, THE GATE OF LIFE? 
( MORS JANUA VITAE? ) 



Published 1919 
By E. P. Dutton & Company 



All Rights Reserved 



Printed in the United States el America. 



TO 

MY FRIENDS IN BOTH WORLDS 

I DEDICATE THIS LITTLE BOOK 

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE 

AND GLAD ANTICIPATION 



PREFACE 

The object of this little book is to bring- 
before those who are not already familiar with 
the results of psychical research some small 
portion of the evidence for survival which has 
been accumulating within the last few years. 
The limits which I have laid down for myself 
are very narrow : I have confined myself to 
one point only, namely, to the consideration 
of that part of the evidence which relates to 
the question of the survival of the personality 
of Frederic Myers; and even so it has been 
necessary to select only a small portion of the 
available material, and to content myself with 
the briefest survey compatible with carrying 
out my purpose, which is to show that there 
exists a mass of evidence worthy of serious 
attention, to indicate what is the nature of 
that evidence and what are the conclusions 
to which it seems to point. 

Many of my readers will doubtless think 
that the conclusions suggested make too large 
vii 



viii PREFACE 

a demand on their credulity, and they may, 
perhaps, formulate in their minds various 
other conceivable explanations of the facts 
here presented. It is not likely, however, that 
they will light upon any hypothesis which 
has not already been fully considered by the 
careful experts who have for years been 
studying these phenomena. I venture to 
affirm that it is generally those who know 
comparatively little of the subject who are 
most ready with the offer of simple explana- 
tions, such as fraud, collusion, chance, or 
mind reading. 

Another class of reader will, perhaps, con- 
sider that I have claimed too little ; that even 
the small amount of evidence which I have 
produced would justify wider and fuller 
deductions than those indicated in this book. 

I am aware that I have not only reduced 
the evidence to a minimum, but that I have 
also set forth only the most obvious conclu- 
sions. This I deliberately aimed at doing. 
Those who care to assimilate the evidence 
here summarised, and who are able to accept, 
at least provisionally, the conclusions based 
upon it, will have no difficulty in finding fur- 
ther facts for study and in drawing fuller 
deductions for themselves. 



PREFACE ix 

I should like to anticipate one question, 
which may perhaps be suggested by the 
perusal of this work : it is this. If those who 
have died wish to communicate, can they not 
do so simply and directly? Must there 
always be an intermediary? Cannot spirit 
speak with spirit without having recourse to 
this difficult and strange method? Certainly 
there are abundant reasons for thinking that 
telepathic intercourse between minds can be 
maintained independently of all the channels 
of sense, and that those who have passed 
into the Unseen can, and do, directly impress 
their thoughts upon the minds of their still 
incarnate friends. But such intercourse does 
not, as a rule, afford evidence which can be 
verified in a way to convince those who do 
not participate in the experience. 

Mr. Myers knew r that something more than 
this was expected from him. He was familiar 
with the kind of objections raised by sceptics, 
objections which are by no means unreason- 
able. He had himself in his lifetime de- 
manded crucial scientific proof of survival, 
and had undertaken, if such a thing were 
possible, to afford the necessary evidence in 
his own case. It would, therefore, have been 
disappointing if after his death there had 



x PREFACE 

been no sort of attempt to produce proof of 
a more complex and unequivocal kind than 
had been previously forthcoming. To pro- 
duce this was evidently a very difficult task, 
requiring much effort and ingenuity. It does 
not follow that all communications between 
spirits need be of this nature. 

I desire to express my sincere thanks to 
the Council of the Society for Psychical 
Research for kindly giving me permission to 
quote at length from the published records 
of the Society; and I hope that the small 
work which I am thus enabled to bring out 
may serve as a useful introduction to the 
study of those records in their complete form. 
At the same time, I wish to make it clearly 
understood that the Society is in no way 
responsible either for the selection of pas- 
sages which I quote or for the treatment of 
the subject. On both these points the whole 
responsibility rests with myself. 

I also wish to acknowledge gratefully the 
kind assistance rendered by Mr, J. B. Shipley 
in correcting my MS. and proofs. 

IT. A. Dallas. 

Hampstead, 
November 1909. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER l'AGE 

INTRODUCTION Xl'ii 

I FREDERIC MYERS AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH I 

II MRS. VERRALL's AUTOMATIC SCRIPT . . IO 

in mrs. Holland's automatic script . . 19 

IV THE 'SYMPOSIUM' EPISODE. . . $$ 

V THE SEALED ENVELOPE . . . -45 

VI MRS. PIPER'S MEDIUMSHIP 59 

VII THEORIES WHICH HAVE BEEN SUGGESTED . 67 

VIII CAUSES OF CONFUSION .... 79 

IX MRS. PIPER'S VISIT TO ENGLAND . 88 

X THE LATIN MESSAGE 95 

XI THE PLOTINUS EPISODE . . . . (l6 

XII CONCLUSION 131 



X] 



INTRODUCTION 

The author has asked me to say a few 
words by way of introduction to this little 
book. I shall, indeed, be glad if any word 
of mine will help to commend it to the reader. 
Miss Dallas has long been known to me as 
an earnest and critical student of psychical 
phenomena. Her knowledge of this subject 
is exceptionally wide, and her judgment sane 
and well informed. In the present volume 
she has dealt in an interesting and succinct 
manner with one fragment of the evidence 
that is slowly accumulating on behalf of 
survival after death. The service which 
she has thus rendered is considerable. Few 
people have the time or patience to read 
through, and carefully consider, the lengthy, 
detailed, and therefore often wearisome, re- 
ports published by the Society for Psychical 
Research. Hence, whilst the interest in this 
subject is spreading throughout the Western 
world with astonishing rapidity, the well in- 
formed are few and far between. 

Unfortunately the fascination of the sub- 
ject is like a candle to moths, it attracts and 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

burns the silly, the credulous and the crazy. 
The natural human longing to lift a corner of 
the veil that hides the life beyond the grave, 
renders a dispassionate consideration of the 
facts, a calm and critical weighing of the 
evidence, as difficult as it is imperative. Only 
by the slow and toilsome pathway of rigorous 
scientific inquiry can any assured results ever 
be obtained. We cannot hope in this genera- 
tion or the next to clear away all the per- 
plexities and pitfalls that confront the in- 
vestigator in these obscure regions. The 
methods of science are not the methods of 
journalism, and though it was to be expected, 
it is equally to be deplored that the untrained 
and unscientific have rushed in where many 
wiser men have feared to tread. Even in 
ancient times, when, doubtless, there existed 
a certain esoteric knowledge of some of the 
psychical phenomena which we have now re- 
discovered, the approach to this subject was 
guarded with jealous care. The inquirer 
needs to be level-headed and to walk warily; 
whilst the foolish and the fashionable who 
merely desire a new sensation, the roving 
journalist and the rapid book-maker, should 
be warned off so treacherous a ground. 



INTRODUCTION X v 

Psychical research, as the author points 
out, requires to be conducted with care and 
wise restraint. When this is done we may dis- 
miss as groundless the fear of any injury 
being done to the psychic. How far any 
injury may occur to the unseen communicators 
on the other side is another matter on which 
we can only form vague impressions. We are 
led to infer that, on their part, it is a self-deny- 
ing act of service, for they speak of being 
"disturbed/*' "suffocated," "kept earth- 
bound " by trying to communicate, possibly 
it" involves a partial loss of their personality. 

As I have said elsewhere, "indiscriminate 
condemnation and ignorant credulity are, in 
truth, the two most dangerous elements with 
which the public are confronted in connection 
with Spiritualism. It is because I hold that 
in the fearless pursuit of truth it is the para- 
mount duty of science to lead the way, and 
erect such sign-posts as may be needed in the 
vast territory we dimly see before us, that I 
so strongly deprecate the past and (to a less 
extent) the present scornful attitude of the 
scientific world towards this subject." 

The shrinking which some deeply religious 
minds feel in relation to Spiritualism is, no 
doubt, partly based upon a mistaken view of 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

the subject, but it is not wholly irrational. 
We instinctively feel, as Archbishop Trench 
has finely expressed it : — 

" Where thou hast touched, O wondrous death, 
Where thou hast come between, 
Lo ! there for ever perisheth 
The common and the mean." 

Whether this be objectively true or not, it 
is certainly true subjectively to the stricken 
survivor, and hence the natural recoil from 
the inane and often vulgar futilities of so 
many spiritualistic seances. It has, however, 
long been recognised, and the Society for 
Psychical Research has clearly demonstrated 
the fact, that very much of what professes 
to be communication from an ultra-mundane 
source is nothing more than automatic ex- 
pressions of the medium's own mind. And 
in every case, as might be expected, the com- 
munications are more or less influenced by 
the mental equipment, the personality, of the 
medium. Hence it is that we find Greek and 
Latin automatically written by a classical 
scholar like Mrs. Verrall, and in general a 
high level of thought expressed in the auto- 
matic writings of those cultured ladies, who 
have in recent years given so much patience 
and labour to the experimental investigation 
of this important field of inquiry. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

In the case of thought transference be- 
tween those who are now living on earth, the 
more completely the receiver, or percipient, 
places his own waking or conscious thoughts 
in abeyance the more effective is the result, 
and doubtless this is also the case with tele- 
pathic communication from the unseen. The 
larger part of human personality lies below 
the threshold of consciousness, and this sub- 
liminal self speaks through involuntary or 
automatic muscular action, just as our con- 
scious self speaks through voluntary muscular 
action. Not only is the occasional intrusion 
of the latter into the former a source of error 
in all sensitives, but a more subtle and prolific 
source of error is the unavoidable intrusion 
of the sensitive's own subliminal self into the 
telepathic message from another. Hence it is 
that messages purporting to come from some 
ultra-mundane intelligence need to be scrutin- 
ised with the utmost care. This has been 
done with increasing knowledge by those 
engaged in the work of the Society for 
Psychical Research and by others. Notwith- 
standing this careful sifting a growing con- 
viction has been produced in most thoughtful 
students of this subject that life and intelli- 
gence demonstrably exist in the unseen, and 
can get into imperfect communication with 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

us. It is true that some of us are not pre- 
pared to go quite as far as the author in 
accepting the identity of the unseen intelli- 
gences as adequately proved. Identity would 
be enormously difficult to establish even be- 
tween two widely separated persons on earth, 
speaking to each other for a few minutes 
through, say, wireless telegraphy, and still 
more so if messages from other sources were 
constantly intermingled. 

Miss Dallas has, however, given a portion 
of the evidence which will enable the reader 
to judge for himself so far as concerns the 
communications purporting to come from Mr. 
Myers. Knowing Mr. Myers as I did inti- 
mately on earth for thirty years, I confess that 
the collective weight of the evidence now 
accumulated through the automatic script of 
Mrs. Holland, Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Piper, 
has convinced me that in this case it is highly 
probable that the unseen intelligence is no 
other than a fragment of the personality of 
Mr. Frederic Myers. For in all these com- 
munications purporting to come from dis- 
carnate human beLigs, it is a sort of dream or 
truncated personality that presents itself, one 
largely bereft of self-determination, and with 
memory and associations strangely limited. 



INTRODUCTION xix 

Nor do we ever hear any connected and con- 
sistent account of their environment or of 
their life in the unseen. As Mrs. Barrett- 
Browning said long ago, " We could as well 
hope to see our faces in a shivered looking- 
glass as catch a clear vision of a desired truth 
or a lost friend by these means. What we do 
see is a shadow at the window, the sign of 
something moving without." It is all very 
like a dream picture, bits here and there 
painted on the medium's own canvas, and 
with patches of the canvas showing in 
between. However, such as it is let us be 
grateful for it, inasmuch as the implications 
are tremendous and far reaching. At the 
same time we need to bear in mind that these 
manifestations, however interpreted, belong 
to the material plane, and that "our true 
union with those we love can. only be reached 
by a common life in God." As Myers himself 
wrote : — 

" Live thou and love ! so best and only so 
Can thy one soul into the One soul flow,— 
Can thy small life to Life's great centre fiee, 
And thou be nothing, and the Lord in thee." 

W. F. Barrett. 

Kingstown, co. Dublin, 
December 1909. 



MORS JANUA VITAE? 

A DISCUSSION OF CERTAIN COMMUNI- 
CATIONS PURPORTING TO COME FROM 
FREDERIC W. B. MYERS 

CHAPTER I 

FREDERIC MYERS AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 

It was on January 26, 1900/ that F. W. H. 
Myers delivered his presidential address be- 
fore the members of the Society for Psychical 
Research. In this address he reminded them 
that he had worked for its objects " from days 
before the Society's formation," and assured 
them of his determination "to go on thus 
working " as long as his faculties would 
allow. {Proceedings of the S. P.R., Part 
xxxviii, p. in.) 

No one, perhaps, has ever had a deeper 
realisation of the importance of the issues in- 
volved in this research ; to him the main ques- 
tion to be determined by this means was the 
question of survival. It is true that it is not 
1 Just a year before his death on January 17th, 1901. 

B 



% MORS JANUA VITAE? 

the only one ; for psychical research has led 
to the discovery of extraordinary human 
faculties, formerly unrecognised by science, 
and further investigations into these faculties 
form an important part of its work ; but men 
of Frederic Myers' temperament would care 
little to be assured of the wealth of human 
endowments if individual consciousness, and 
all that it includes, are doomed to final and 
complete extinction. In his opinion the ques- 
tion of survival is the " only test we can apply 
to the existence of a Providence. " "It has 
been doubt as to the value of life and love," 
he says, "which has made the decadence of 
almost all civilisations " {Ibid. p. 113). 
Neither was it the bare fact of survival of 
which he desired to assure himself. There 
are two poems on immortality, written by him, 
which show that there were moments in which 
he contemplated with repugnance the possi- 
bility of persistence under conditions devoid 
of delight, conditions under which the weari- 
ness of earthly life might be renewed, or at 
least all sense of personal identity might be 
lost. 

. One of these poems will be found in a 
volume entitled Fragments of Prose and 
Poetry. In the second stanza he writes: — 



FREDERIC MYERS 3 

Yet if for evermore I must convey 
These weary senses thro' an endless day 

And gaze on God with these exhausted eyes, 
I fear that howsoe'er the seraphs play 
My life shall not be theirs, nor I as they, 

But homeless in the heart of Paradise 1 (p. 173). 

The other poem is in a volume called 
Renewal of Youth, published in 1882 : — 

Ah, but who knows in what thin form and strange, 
Through what appalled perplexities of change, 
Wakes the sad soul, which, having once forgone 
This earth familiar and her friends thereon 
In interstellar void becomes a chill 
Outlying fragment of the Master Will; 
So severed, so forgetting, shall not she 
Lament, immortal, immortality? (p. 55.) 

We see, therefore, that Frederic Myers did 
not enter upon this quest with that indiffer- 
ence as to the result, which some would have 
us regard as an essential condition for an 
impartial investigator. 

Is it true, however, that an attitude of in- 
difference as to the nature of the issue is 
the most favourable for successful discovery ? 

Professor William James evidently does 

1 In this poem there are lines obviously related 
to an Ode of Horace (see I. 28), concerning which 
Mr. Myers wrote to Dr. Verrall that it had " entered 
as deeply as any Horatian passage " into his own 
inner history. (See Proceedings, Part lvii, p. 
406.) 

B 2 . 



4 MORS JANUA VITAEr 

not think so. In an article in the Hibbert 
Journal, January 1909, he says : — 

Things reveal themselves soonest to those who 
passionately want them — Need sharpens wit. To a 
mind content with little the much of the Universe 
may always remain hid (p. 294). 

This only applies, of course, to sincere 
minds, who honour truth above all things, 
and are prepared to sacrifice their most 
treasured hopes if they are convinced that 
they are illusions. 

Frederic Myers olid make this great sur- 
render : and he has told us that to do so was 
" more grievous " to him than anything else 
which happened to him in life. 1 Although he 
did not make the sacrifice with indifference, 
his passionate desire for assurance of im- 
mortal life of a worthy and satisfying nature 
bore a marked effect on his work, for it 
intensified his perception of all that seems to 
negative this hope, he became more keenly 
alive to weak points in the evidence in favour 
of immortality. "Desire is not necessarily 
bias" he writes, "and my personal history 
has convinced myself — though I cannot claim 

1 Proceedings, Part xxxvii, p. 113. See also 
the poem called "Retrospect" (Fragments of Prose 
and Poetry , p. 119). 



FREDERIC MYERS 5 

that it shall convince others also — that my 
wishes do not strongly warp my judgment — 
nay, that sometimes the very keenness of per- 
sonal anxiety may make one afraid to believe, 
as readily as other men, that which one most 
longs for." (Part xxxvii, p. 113.) 

It was in this spirit, moved by the stimulus 
of almost passionate but well-nigh hopeless 
desire, and in an attitude of critical and 
avowed agnosticism, that Frederic Myers 
applied himself to the task which occupied 
the latter half of his life. 

It was with "little hope — almost with re- 
luctant scorn "— he says, " but with the feel- 
ing that no last chance of the great discovery 
should be thrown aside/' that he turned to 
this research, and he adds : — 

It is only after thirty years of such study as I 
have been able to give that I say to myself at last, 
Habes totA quod mente petisti — "Thou hast what 
thy whole heart desired " ; — that I recognize that for 
me this fresh evidence, — while raising that great 
historic incident of the Resurrection into new credi- 
bility, — has also filled me with a sense of insight and 
of thankfulness such as even my first ardent Chris- 
tianity did not bestow (Ibid. p. 114). 

It must not be supposed, however, that 
Frederic Myers assumed that conviction of 
truth could only be reached by this process 
of arduous scientific study, far from it; he 



6 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

did not claim that this method is a substitute 
for intuition and revelation. He regarded 
psychical science as a means by which "to 
prove the preamble of all religions, to demon- 
strate that a spiritual world exists"; but he 
did not deny, he was, indeed, eventually 
assured, that men may be carried by intuition 
into " even profounder apprehensions of truth 
— but such apprehensions are not transfer- 
able." Moreover it is not every one who 
has this intuitive insight, and those who have 
such experiences know that they are trans- 
itory, and there are times when they, too, 
feel urgent need to seek some scientific basis 
for the security of their highest hopes. The 
work of Frederic Myers was to demonstrate 
that this basis exists. 

How the idea of this research first origin- 
ated he has related in his obituary notice of 
his friend, Professor Henry Sidgwick : — 

I felt drawn in my perplexities to Henry Sidgwick 
as somehow my only hope. 

In a starlight walk which I shall not forget 
(December 3rd, 1869), I asked him, almost with 
trembling, whether he thought that when Tradition, 
Intuition, Metaphysic, had failed to solve the riddle 
of the Universe, there was still a chance that from any 
actual observable phenomena— ghosts, spirits, what- 
soever there might be— some valid knowledge might 
be drawn as to a World Unseen. Already, it 
seemed, he had thought that this was possible; 



FREDERIC MYERS 7 

steadily, though in no sanguine fashion, he indicated 
some last grounds of hope; and from that night 
onwards I resolved to pursue this quest, if it might 
be, at his side (Fragments of Prose and Poetry, 
PP- 98, 99)- 

It is deeply interesting to compare this 
passage with his presidential address deli- 
vered thirty-one years later, in which he was 
able to affirm : — 

This persistent analysis of unexplored faculty has 
revealed to us already far more than I, for one, had 
ever dared to hope. ... I do not presume to fore- 
cast what we may come in time to learn ; I only say 
that for the present hour there will be enough of 
motive to urge us to utmost effort to rise in the scale 
of being (Proceedings, Part xxxvii, pp. 118, 123). 

Further on in this address, after alluding 
to the " enfranchisement of the blessed dead," 
he continues : — 

We know that they are still minded to keep us 
sharers in their joy. It is they, not we, who are 
working now. . . . Nay, it may be that our response, 
our devotion, is a needful element in their ascending 
joy; and God may have provided some better thing 
for us, that they without us should not be made 
perfect. ... I believe that upon our own attitude 
towards these nascent communications their progress 
and development depend, so that we cannot too soon 
direct attention to the high responsibilities opening 
on our view (Part lvii, p. 123). 

This confidence in their co-operation with 
us was one which he held with increasing 
assurance. 



8 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

In his work on Human Personality he 
again refers to it : — 

The experiments that are being made are not the 
work of earthly skill. All that we can contribute to 
the new result is an attitude of patience, attention, 
care ; an honest readiness to receive and weigh 
whatever may be given into our keeping by intelli- 
gences beyond our own. Experiments, I say, there 
are, probably experiments of a complexity and diffi- 
culty which surpass our imagination ; but they are 
made from the other side of the gulf by the efforts 
of spirits who discern pathways and possibilities 
which for us are impenetrably dark (Human Person- 
ality, Vol. II, p. 275). 

This passage is of peculiar interest in view 
of subsequent developments, developments 
which bear striking testimony to the correct- 
ness of the belief he here expresses. In order 
to be able to estimate the evidence which has 
accumulated since Frederic Myers* death, 
and more particularly the facts which claim 
to show that he is himself striving to bridge 
the gulf between the two worlds and to prove 
his identity to his colleagues, it is desirable 
to be acquainted in some measure with the 
motives, aims and characteristics which he 
displayed in this life. Within the limits of a 
short chapter it is impossible to do more than 
indicate some of these in briefest manner, 
but the reader unfamiliar with his writings 



FREDERIC MYERS 9 

can gather enough from this short outline to 
recognise that if any discarnate spirit can bear 
witness from the other sphere of existence to 
the reality and worth of life beyond death, 
Frederic Myers would, of all men, be the one 
we should expect to find so doing. 



CHAPTER II 

MRS. VERRALL* S AUTOMATIC SCRIPT 

As this book will probably come into the 
hands of those who are not familiar with the 
publications of the Society for Psychical 
Research, some account must be given of 
those through whom have come the " com- 
munications " presently to be discussed. 
These were principally Mrs. Verrall, Miss 
Helen Verrall, Mrs. " Holland " (pseudo- 
nym), Mrs. " Forbes " (pseudonym), and Mrs. 
Piper, and also Mrs. Thompson. 

Mrs. Verrall is a member of the Council of 
the S.P.R., a classical scholar and a lecturer 
at Newnham College. In Proceedings, Part 
liii, she has given a full account and 
detailed analysis of her automatic writings, 
from which we learn the following facts. 

Mrs. Verrall had never succeeded in any 
attempt to obtain intelligible automatic writ- 
ing, and had come to the conclusion that this 
was impossible for her ; however, in the month 

IO 



MRS. VERRALI/S SCRIPT 11 

in which Mr. Myers died (January 1901), she 
resolved to make another and more persistent 
attempt, but was not successful until March 5. 
On that day, after a few nonsense words, 
the pencil, held between her thumb and first 
finger, wrote rapidly in Latin. She says : — 

I was writing in the dark and could not see what 
I wrote; the words came to me as single things, 
and I was so much occupied in recording each as it 
came that I had not any general notion what the 
meaning was. I could never remember the last 
word; it seemed to vanish completely as soon as I 
had written it. Sometimes I had great difficulty in 
recognising what was the word I wanted to write, 
while at other times I could only get part of it. 
When I had filled one sheet of paper I turned up 
the electric light and read what had been written 
before going on to the next sheet. On this first 
occasion, March 5, 1901, my hand wrote about 80 
words almost entirely in Latin, but though the words 
are consecutive and seem to make phrases, and 
though some of the phrases seem intelligible, there 
is no general sense in the passage. Till the end of 
March, with a very few exceptions, I continued daily 
to write fluently in Latin, with occasional Greek 
words. The writing was not intelligible through- 
out, but it improved and was very different from the 
rubbish with which it began. . . . The actual writing 
was my own normal handwriting. . . . After the 
first two or three times of writing I never read what 
had been written till the end, and though I con- 
tinued to be aware of the particular word, or perhaps 
two words, that I was writing, I still retained no 
recollection of what I had just written and no 
general notion as to the meaning of the whole (Part 
liii, pp. 9, 10). 



12 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

At any early stage the script assumed the 
character of conversation, conversation inter- 
rupted and confused, as if heard through a 
telephone when the wires " seem to have got 
into contact, so that the operator hears re- 
marks not addressed directly to him " (p. 69). 
This is not an uncommon experience with 
automatic writers; it is curious and significant. 
In these conversations the sensitive is some- 
times spoken of in the third person. For 
instance, in January 1902, the following was 
written : — 

Patience for you both it will come. Three 
Latin words can she not write them? would give the 
clue (p. 69). 

On January 15th, 1903, this was written : — 

Wait for the word. He said, " I will send the half 
message to Mrs. Verrall and you have the other 
half." Tell Hodgson this, but you have not got the 
word yet (p. 70). 

This passage suggests an attempt on the 
part of some one to produce a "cross-corre- 
spondence," and reads as if it were part of a 
conversation on the subject between two or 
more persons. 

The " communicators " through Mrs. Ver- 
rall are very various; some are identifiable, 
and many are unknown, they are distinguished 
by names or signs. 



MRS. VERRALI/S SCRIPT 13 

One " communicator " appends the Greek 
cross to his writings. This individuality was 
specially successful, and seemed to have 
a particular interest in Mrs. Piper and 
Dr. Hodgson. This deserves to be noted; 
for the Greek cross is the sign habitually 
appended to the script of one of Mrs. Piper's 
principal controls, called " Rector," and 
although Mrs. Verrall had read this script, 
and may therefore have subconsciously noted 
the fact, she states that she had not con- 
sciously done so. In view of subsequent 
developments the incident has some signifi- 
cance. 

Another very significant point in her script 
Is that it frequently makes allusion to the 
importance of combined efforts. For in- 
stance : — 

On March 19, 1902, the script says that, without 
"something- composite," the whole is not "in good 
rhythm," makes a statement about what can be 
"harmonised," and advises me not to guess but to 
receive what "thought " casts out (Ibid. p. 126). 

Later (May 31, 1902) : — 

"None of all this perpetual chatter" is said 
"to fit together," and some one "versed in Music 
or the Muses " (or perhaps Musaeus *} is mentioned. 

1 Musaeus is a traditional poet or mystic of the 
same type as Orpheus. 



14 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

The remarks on July 13, 1902, and June 21, 1903 . . . 
seem to imply that some kind of "combination " is 
required. The same idea occurs on January 30, 
1903, when the script says that what "you have 
chattered about " and " she has thought " of fit 
together, " that joint action " is better, and that 
" those who would separate " are not the best in this 
matter, though there are occasions when separation 
must be made (Part liii, p. 126). 

One further quotation on this point may be 
made, as it is particularly remarkable : — 

November 3, 1902 — None the less through others 
not known speaks the fate, — fatum ineffabile ineluc- 
table, etsi tu magno contendis corpore contra. 1 I 
will give the words between you neither alone can 
read, but together they will give the clue he wants. 
Comperire . . . redintegratio amoris A nee non 
secessus (desunt hi alia et alioquin). Redit iam 
verbum ipsum — Caritatis vocabulum, but hers 

are in English and will fill the gaps — Wait some 
time for hers — it is hard to give her words. Tuus 
— iam nomen habes in mente etsi non in calamo 
(Ibid. p. 170). 

When we reach the consideration of Mrs. 
Holland's automatic script we shall recognise 
the importance of the references to combined 
action. We must remember that Mrs. Hol- 
land was at this time quite unknown to Mrs. 

1 Translatio?i. — "The fate unspeakable unavoid- 
able, although you with your strength fight against 
it ... to discover . . . the restoration of love and 
not separation (here (?) and elsewhere (?) words are 
missing). Now the word itself returns — the term 
Charity. . . . Yours — you have the name in your 
mind now though not on your pen." 



MRS. VERRALI/S SCRIPT 15 

Verrall. Her automatic script, unlike that of 
Mrs. Verrall, was almost entirely written in 
English, and with reference to the sentence 
above quoted, " some one versed in music or 
the Muses," it is interesting to find that Mrs. 
Holland, when describing her experiences 
previous to 1903, says, "Any automatic writ- 
ing that comes to me is nearly always in 
verse." 

This introduces the idea of "cross-corre- 
spondences," a term which has gained a 
technical meaning. When used in psychical 
research the term " cross-correspondence " 
denotes the independent occurrence, at ap- 
proximately the same time, of the same or 
obviously related ideas, in the script of two or 
more automatic writers. 

In his work on Psychical Research and the 
Resurrection Professor Hyslop mentions 
that, before his death, Mr. Myers and also 
Dr. Hodgson had tried occasionally to make 
experiments of this kind. The importance of 
such experiments, if successful, is that, when 
carried through under strictly test conditions, 
they narrow the problem to be solved by prov- 
ing that one and the same intelligence must 
be controlling two independent minds. It is 
necessary that the reader should grasp this 



16 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

fact before proceeding to consider the next 
question, namely, to whom does this con- 
trolling intelligence belong? Is it that of one 
or other of the automatists ? Or is there any 
indication that it is due to the activity of some 
extraneous mind? If the cross-correspond- 
ences contain ideas, not identical but related, 
the hypothesis of telepathy from one of the 
automatists seems very improbable, and we 
are compelled to seek for some other intelli- 
gent agent; and if, in addition, the corre- 
spondences bear the impress of a selective, 
intelligent purpose, the conclusion that they 
originate in an independent mind seems well- 
nigh unavoidable. 

Mrs. VerralFs own attitude towards the 
writing was impartial and critical ; at first she 
was disposed to feel impatient of the apparent 
futility of the long, often disconnected, sen- 
tences, and sceptical as to there being any 
value in the matter produced. She writes : — 

May 1 6 and 17 were the dates when first it 
seemed to me that there was something like evidence 
for an external cause for the writing, and on June 1 
of the same year a distinct step in the progressive 
opinion of which I have spoken was made (Part 
liii, p. 92). 

Her conviction as to the importance of the 



MRS. VERRALI/S SCRIPT IT 

script naturally increased with the evidence 
for its veridical character. 

In May 1901 the first obvious cross-corre- 
spondence occurred between her and Mrs, 
Thompson. The case is an interesting one. 
It is described in Part liii, pp. 207, 208. 

Although it is not possible to relate this 
incident in detail, a summary of it must be 
given, as it is remarkable. During the early 
part of May 1901 Mrs. Verrall received an 
intimation through her automatic writing that 
before the 17th inst. Mrs. Thompson would 
say something, of which she would be in- 
formed through Sir Oliver Lodge. She was 
also, on May 8th, between 10 and 10.30 p.m., 
told that a control, claiming to be Mr. Myers, 
was at that time " communicating " elsewhere. 
At this period Mrs. Thompson did not usu- 
ally go into trance or in any way develop her 
psychic powers; Mrs. Verrall, therefore, ex- 
pected that anything which Mrs. Thompson 
might have said would have been said in her 
normal state. As a matter of fact, however, 
on the evening of the 8th, Mrs. Thompson, 
who was dining with Sir Oliver and Lady 
Lodge, unexpectedly went into trance and 
purported to be controlled by Mr. Myers, 
who then made the statement that some 



18 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

one was calling him elsewhere. This, be it 
noted, took place at the very hour at which 
Mrs. Verrall was getting writing from the 
" Myers control," and was told, " Nc power — 
doing something else to-night." 

If this incident stood alone it would be re- 
markable, but it does not stand alone; it is 
one of many, even more remarkable, cross - 
correspondences, some few of which we are 
about to consider. 



CHAPTER III 

mrs. Holland's automatic script 

Some account must now be given of the 
experiences of Mrs. Holland. 1 

This lady says that she attempted auto- 
matic writing about the year 1893, obtaining, 
at first, only short and uninteresting sen- 
tences. Later the writing nearly always took 
the form of verses; these, "though often 
childishly simple in wording and jingling in 
rhyme, are rarely trivial in subject." She 
adds, " I am always fully conscious, but my 
hand moves so rapidly that I seldom know 
what words it is forming/' (Part lv, p. 171.) 

In July 1903, when residing in India, she 
began to correspond with Miss Johnson, the 
research officer of the S.P.R. 

In June of that year she read Mr. Myers' 

1 The few details given in this chapter are derived 
from an able report by Miss Johnson (research 
officer of the S.P.R.), published in Proceedings, 
Part lv. 

c 2 19 



20 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

work, Human Personality. She had no recol- 
lection of having even heard his name before 
reading it. " But her own experience and 
her own temperament had specially prepared 
her for the reception of it, and the person- 
ality of the author strongly appealed to her " 
(p. 176). It was not surprising, therefore, 
that the automatic script should from this 
date be to a great extent associated with the 
name of Frederic Myers. 

Mrs. Holland showed admirable imparti- 
ality in her own attitude, and Miss Johnson 
says that she gave her every possible help 
in her study of the script. 

Not only has she answered fully and freely a very 
large number of questions, and herself volunteered 
much information, which I could not have obtained 
otherwise, about the sources or possible sources of 
many of the statements in the script, but she has 
also accepted with the utmost readiness any sugges- 
tion of mine as to experiments or methods of pro- 
cedure. Further, she has consented to remain for 
months at a time in ignorance of the results of these 
experiments, and has continued nevertheless to 
persevere with them (p. 175). 

In reply to an inquiry as to whether she 
had seen any of the S.P.R. Proceedings or 
Journals, Mrs. Holland wrote : — 

I am delighted to answer any questions that 
may help me to understand how much of the auto- 
matic writing I get is due to subconscious memory, 



MRS. HOLLAND'S SCRIPT 21 

and how much, if any, comes from other influences. 
I am so afraid of becoming a self-deceiver, charlatan 
malgre moil I have never seen any of the Proceed- 
ings or Journals of the S.P.R., and Mr. Myers' 
Human Personality is the only book on the subject 
I have ever read (Ibid. pp. 189, 190). 

She then mentions a few collections of 
ghost stories that she had read, and some 
flowery "spirit writings" sent to her in MS. 
by a friend in 1902, which she says she dis- 
liked intensely, and adds, " I have never 
seen any other examples of automatic writ- 
ing. 

She then promised to send her script to 
Miss Johnson, and added, " Please continue 
not to give me any clue as to the meaning or 
meaninglessness of anything that I may send 
you ; I am very anxious not to begin to think 
of ' hits and misses/ and indeed I feel as if 
the less I thought of it the less misleading it 
is likely to be " (p. 190). 

This will suffice to show the disinterested 
spirit which animated Mrs. Holland, and any 
one at all acquainted with the methods of 
the S.P.R. will not require to be assured that, 
on her part, Miss Johnson took every pre- 
caution to avoid the possibility that her 
correspondent should obtain through her 
letters any information or hint which would 



22 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

vitiate the experiments. The correspond- 
ents did not meet until Mrs. Holland came 
to England in the autumn of 1905. 

The following review of Mrs. Holland's 
script must be limited to incidents immedi- 
ately connected with Frederic Myers; other 
matters, however striking or evidential, do 
not come within the scope of this work, and 
even among such incidents as are relevant 
to our subject only a small selection can be 
referred to. 

In September 1903 Mrs. Holland re-read 
Human PersonaVdy. 

On September 16 (1903) the following 

passage was automatically written by her 

hand : — 

(September 16, 7.30 a.m.) 

F. 
Friend while on earth with knowledge slight 
I had the living power to write 
Death tutored now in things of might 
I yearn to you and cannot write. 

17/ 
It may be that those who die suddenly 
suffer no prolonged obscuration of consciousness 
but for my own experience the unconsciousness 
was exceedingly prolonged. 

I 1 
The reality is infinitely more wonderful than our 

most daring conjectures. 
Indeed no conjecture can be sufficiently daring. 



MRS. HOLLAND'S SCRIPT 23 

But this is like the first stumbling attempts at 
expression in an unknown language imperfectly ex- 
plained. So far away, so very far away, and yet 
longing and understanding potentialities of nearness. 

M. 

(p. 192). 

Miss Johnson comments on this script as 
follows : — 

It is written on two sides of a half-sheet of paper ; 
the first side begins with the initial "F.," and the 
second ends with the initial "M." ; the whole passage 
is divided into four sections, the first three ending 
respectively in " 17/," " /i " and " /oi." 

January 17, 1901, was the date of Mr. Myers' 
death, mentioned in Human Personality ; but the 
simple device of separating these initials and items 
from one another was completely effective in its 
apparent object. I read the passage a good many 
times before I saw what they meant, and I found 
that the meaning had entirely escaped Mrs. Hol- 
land's notice 1 (p. 178). 

The control calling itself Frederic Myers 
is characterised by an almost passionate 
eagerness, and manifests intense longing to 
be recognised; when the sensitive's incredu- 
lity was very pronounced (as it sometimes 
was), or when the communications seemed 

1 Other occasions on which the sensitive was kept 
in ignorance of the significance of her script by 
ingenious devices of this sort will be found in Part 
lv, pp. 



24 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

particularly difficult, the apparent conscious- 
ness of unavailing effort on the part of the 
control becomes pathetic. 

Another control who signs " G " (Edmund 
Gurney) shows, on the contrary, somewhat 
brusque annoyance at her lack of persistence 
and belief, and he reprimands her with much 
decision; Myers appears more anxious, but 
gentler, and tries to encourage, sometimes by 
courteous pleading, sometimes by explana- 
tions. 

For instance we read the following : — 

(M.) It is such a pity to break the chain — 
Since you were out in the morning yesterday why 
did you not try in the afternoon — A few minutes 
steadily each day are not much to ask from you. . . . 

(G.) I can't help feeling vexed or rather angry at 
the half-hearted way in which you go in for this — 
you should either take it or leave it — If you don't 
care enough to try every day for a short time better 
drop it altogether. It's like making appointments 
and not keeping them. You endanger your own 
powers of sensitiveness and annoy us bitterly. G. . . . 

(M.) Go on, do go on, you are beginning to 
establish communication — We shall be able to 
strengthen your powers of will presently, only do 
have a little faith and patience (pp. 200, 201). 

The following is also an interesting bit of 
script :■ — 

(M.) I want to make it thoroughly clear to you all 
that the eidolon is not the spirit — only the simula- 



MRS. HOLLAND'S SCRIPT 25 

chrum (sic) — If M. were to see me sitting at my 
table, or if any one of you became conscious of my 
semblance standing near my chair that would not 
be me. My spirit would be there invisible but per- 
ceptive but the appearance would be merely to call 
your attention to identify me — It fades and grows 
less easily recognisable as the years pass and my 
remembrance of my earthly appearance grows 
weaker — 

If you saw me as I am now you would not recog- 
nize me in the least — 

"All I could never be — All men refused in me 

This I was worth to God whose wheel the pitcher 
shaped — " 2 

I appear now as I would fain have been — as I 
desired to be in the very vain dreams of youth — and 
the time-lined, pain-lined suffering face that some 
of you remember with tenderness is a mere mask 
now that I strive to conjure up for you to know me 
by — But my power is weak and you are not really 
receptive — 

. . . Remember once again that the phantasm, the 
so-called ghost is a counterfeit presentiment pro- 
jected by the spirit (p. 215). 

In this script there is a detail worth noting,\ 
arid that is, the use of the terms eidolon and 
simulacrum. 

On this Mrs. Verrall comments as fol- 
lows : — 

Homer (Odyssey, XI, 601) describes how 
Odysseus met in Hades "Great Herakles, his phan- 
tom (etSoAov) ; himself (avros) rejoices amid the 
immortals," etc. It is a famous passage, as the 

1 Browning, Rabbi ben Ezra; "refused" should 
be "ignored." 



26 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

question of how Herakles came to be in Hades has 
been much discussed. 

It is the passage alluded to by Plotinus, in the 
extract quoted in Human Personalily, Vol. II, 
p. 290. 

But the point as regards Mrs. Holland's script is 
the scholarly and classical use of the words eidolon 
and simulacrum . . . 

While we should not expect this usage to be 
known to one who was not a classical scholar, it 
would be likely to be familiar to readers of Homer 
and Lucretius, and in the quotations from Plotinus 
in Human Personality, we have direct proof (if it 
were wanted) that Mr. Myers knew the passage in 
XI Odyssey, the locus classicus for the special use 
of ciSwXoy. 1 (p. 216). 

It is difficult and often impossible to 
differentiate between the impressions re- 
ceived by the sensitive and her own inter- 
pretation of these. Occasionally, however, 
the distinction can be made without difficulty, 
and these cases are instructive ; for they show 
how easily false interpretations of genuine 
impression may be made, quite in good faith, 
and therefore with how much reserve and 
caution mediumistic "messages" should be 
received, and more particularly if these pro- 
fess to give guidance for practical conduct. 

1 Mrs. Holland cannot have derived the term from 
Human Personality, for although Myers refers in 
that work to the above-named passage from the 
Odyssey, he does not use the term eidolon when so 
doing. 



MRS. HOLLAND'S SCRIPT 27 

In a later script (Nov. 7, 1903) occurs a 
detailed description of a tall man about sixty 
years of age. Mrs. Holland took this to be 
a picture of F. W. H. Myers. In this she was 
quite mistaken. 

The description applied to Dr. A. W. 
Verrall, and was correct in almost every 
particular. 

On re-reading the description later Mrs. 
Verrall writes : — 

The attitude strikes me as particularly good. 
The trick of leaning forward and gesticulating when 
interested in what he talks of is very characteristic 
in the case of Cambridge friends and especially of 
Mr. Myers (p. 188). 

Now, although Mrs. Holland was mis- 
taken in her interpretation of the picture, 
there was remarkable appropriateness in 
Myers' friend, Dr. Verrall, being described 
on this occasion, for the script began with 
the words : — 

My dear Mrs. Verrall, 

I am very anxious to speak to some of the old 
friends — Miss J.— and to A. W., 

and it concludes as follows : — 

Get a proof — try for a proof if you feel this is a 
waste of time without Send this to Mrs. Verrall, 

5, Selwyn Gardens, 

Cambridge. 



28 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

This script was prefaced by the initial 
"F." 

Referring to this experience Mrs. Holland 
writes : — 

I have never been in Cambridge, but in the two 
pages of automatic writing I enclose, what purports 
to be an address there is thrice given, and the 
third time it is stated to be Mrs. Verrall's. 

I remember that lady's name in connection with 
experiments with crystal vision in Human Person- 
ality, but I have no means of knowing if " Selwyn 
Gardens " is a real place (p. 185). 

From an evidential point of view the in- 
cident would be much less interesting if the 
man described had been like Frederic 
Myers, for Mrs. Holland might possibly 
have seen a portrait of him; but Mrs. Verrall 
tells us that, as far as she knows, no portrait 
of her husband had ever appeared in an illus- 
trated paper (p. 188), and the last photo- 
graph of him represented him at the age of 
forty, so that it is impossible that Mrs. Hol- 
land could have known his appearance. 

On the day after this script reached Miss 
Johnson (in the autumn of 1903), she men- 
tioned to Mrs. Verrall that her name and 
address had occurred in the script of a lady 
in India; but nothing further was told Mrs. 
Verrall about this script until October 1905. 



MRS. HOLLANDS SCRIPT 29 

On November 25, 1903, the following sug- 
gestion was made in Mrs. Holland's script 
by the control signing " G." 

Now there is an experiment I want you to make 
— suggest to the P.R. (to Miss J.) that some one with 
a trained will — she will have no difficulty in finding 
some one of the sort — is to try — for a few minutes 
— every morning for at least a month — to convey a 
thought — a phrase — a name — anything you like to 
your mind (p. 206). 

This suggestion was not immediately acted 
upon ; a gap occurred in Mrs. Holland's writ- 
ing whilst she was travelling, and no experi- 
ment of the kind was tried until March 1905. 

Miss Johnson then arranged with Mrs. 
Verrall and Mrs. Holland that they should 
write once a week on the same day, both 
scripts being eventually sent to her for com- 
parison; the writers remained unknown to 
each other and held no communication what- 
soever. ' The identity of each writer was 
first disclosed to the other in October 1905 " 

(P- 2 52). 

The suggestion, be it observed, was made 
by the control in November 1903; but on 
January 17, 1904, more than a year before 
the suggestion was acted upon by the sensi- 
tives, a cross-correspondence occurred in the 
scripts of Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland. 



30 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

It looks almost as if the controls, finding the 
operators on this side would not attempt the 
experiment, determined to try and carry it 
out entirely on their own account. The 
details of this cross-correspondence must be 
greatly epitomised. It will suffice to say that 
Mrs. Verrall's script refers to the "seal of 
the letter," and added, " The question 1 is 
answered and the text given." 

Mrs. Holland's script on the same date is 
as follows : — 

Attempt to get a message through. Sealed 
envelope not to be opened yet. 

i Cor. xvi. 13. Take the message to you all. 

(This text had a special association for 
Mr. Myers and Mrs. Verrall.) 

Here more follows of an intense and emo- 
tional nature expressive of yearning to prove 
his identity "amid unspeakable difficulties." 
The text, although not the one which had 
been asked for, and to which Mrs. Verrall 
supposed that her script referred, is one 
which had associations for both Frederic 
Myers and Mrs. Verrall, inasmuch as it is 
inscribed, in Greek characters, over the gate- 

1 To explain what t^is question refers to would 
involve too wide a digression. 






MRS. HOLLAND'S SCRIPT 31 

way of Selwyn College, Cambridge, which 
Mr. Myers must often have passed in going 
from his house to Mrs. VerralPs. 

This text turns up in the script again more 
than a year later, in connection with Mrs. 
Verrall, and before Mrs. Holland had been 
informed that there was any significance in 
its first appearance (p. 253). 

The fact that we have here a cross-corre- 
spondence due to something more than co- 
incidence will hardly be questioned. It is 
rendered more striking by the fact that a few 
weeks before, on December 5th, Mrs. Hol- 
land was told : — 

I fear you will never be really responsive trying 
alone — at least not to influences unknown to you 
while they lived. You need the connecting bond. 

The subject of the sealed envelope in- 
volves a perplexing problem which must be 
dealt with in a later chapter. 

On March 1 the two sensitives began to 
experiment together, as above mentioned, 
and cross - correspondences continued to 
appear at intervals in the two scripts. Both 
in Mrs. VerralPs script and in Mrs. Hol- 
land's the writing frequently urges combin- 
ing and weaving together, as for instance 
(March 31, 1901) : : 'To one super-posing 



32 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

certain things on certain things every thing 
is clear. " This thought seems also to be 
expressed in the following lines written auto- 
matically by Mrs. Verrall's hand (July 20, 
1904):— 

So flash successive visions in a glass 

the while we dreaming scarce behold them pass. 

Yet all the while on the awakened soul 

each flitting image helps imprint the whole 

and superposed on what was first impressed 

fills so the outline, colour, and the rest, 

and while we only watch the master's hand, 

no glimpse vouchsafed us of the building planned, 

stone upon stone, the battlements arise, 

till the fair fabric flashes in the skies. 

(Part lv, p. 378.) 









CHAPTER IV 

THE ' SYMPOSIUM ' EPISODE 

At an early period in the development of 
Mrs. Verrall's automatic script an idea 
emerged which formed the subject of a cross- 
correspondence with Mrs. Forbes, and is of 
so significant a character that it will be inter- 
esting to trace it through its various stages. 
This can only be done by putting together 
and comparing the pieces of writing in which 
this idea appears. Some demand must be 
made on the patience of the reader, as the 
process of comparing these writings may be 
rather tedious. The episode in question is 
associated with a passage in Plato's Sym- 
posium, in which Socrates says that he will 
repeat what he learnt from Diotima, a pro- 
phetess of Mantinea. Love is, says Diotima, 
one of the race of spirits whose function it is 
to act as interpreters and mediators between 
gods and men. (See The Banquet. Also Part 
liii, p. 311.) 

d 33 



34 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

Mrs. Verrall's attention was first drawn to 
this subject in the following manner : — 

It was on May 31, 1901, that the script made the 
first recognisable and direct reference to the dialogue 
in the words " Diotima gave the clue." I looked 

the passage up to see what Diotima said, and 
how far it could be described as a "clue." I noted 
at the time what I conceived" to be intended as the 
clue, namely, that she told Socrates that Love was 
neither a god nor a man, but a great spirit, and that 
the spiritual, being between God and man, had the 
power of interpreting and conveying messages from 
God to man and man to God ; that all the intercourse 
and talk of God to men, whether sleeping or waking, 
is through spirits, one of these is Love. 

I was struck with ihe appropriateness of the 
message in itself and with the form in which it was 
conveyed — not directly in words, but by an allusion 
to Plato. I was certain that I had never seen the 
passage, and therefore that no emergence of for- 
gotten knowledge could account for its appearance, 
so that the effect upon me was considerable and 
lasting (pp. 311, 312). 

On Sunday, March 17, Mrs. Verrall and 
Mrs. Forbes were both writing automatically, 
not together, but unknown to each other. Mrs. 
Verrall's writing contained, for the first time, 
what she regarded as a vague allusion to Mrs. 
Forbes. Later, on May 11, through Mrs. 
Thompson, the "Myers control" said, "I 
tried on Sunday with — I saw the recep- 
tacle but not this one." 

Sir Oliver Lodge has suggested that this 
statement made in Mrs. Thompson's trance, 



THE 'SYMPOSIUM' EPISODE 35 

" may, perhaps, be connected with the sudden 
impulse on Sunday, March 17, which induced 
Mrs. Verrall to write automatically, and which 
produced the first reference to Mrs. Forbes in 
what eventually became a long series of cross- 
correspondences between those two auto- 
matists." If this suggestion is correct it 
looks as if, already, at this date, Mr. Myers 
had observed Mrs. Forbes, had noted her 
capacity as a " receptacle " and had tried to 
work through her. 

It was not until September 20, 1901, how- 
ever, that a definite mention of Mrs. Forbes 
appeared in Mrs. Verrall's script, thus : — 

Ask Mrs. Forbes if she has a message for you — 
something about Gima or some such word. Gima 
dion looks the length. ye/>ta Aids. 

Then follows another incoherent attempt 
to get this word written, and the script con- 
tinues : — 

One single word ... I can't get it. 

As I read this it occurred to me that " Gima 
dion " may probably represent an early 
attempt (evidently unsuccessful) to produce a 
cross-correspondence with Mrs. Forbes in 
connection with the passage in the Sym- 
posium. 

D 2 



36 MORS JAN U A VITAE? 

"Gima dion looks the length" of the 
name " Diotima," G being substituted for T, 
and " dion " for " dio." (See Part liii, p. 356 ; 
compare also the script of December 18, 
1901, p. 243.) 

Noting that in her report Mrs. Verrall re- 
marks that this bit of her script seemed unin- 
telligible, I wrote and asked her whether she 
did not think that it might have this connec- 
tion with the " single word," " Diotima." 
With her kind permission I append her reply, 
which is of considerable interest. 

5 Selwyn Gardens, Cambridge, 

Feb. 12, 1909. 

I am much obliged for your suggestion, which 
had not occurred to me. I think it is quite possible 
that you are right, and that the script of September 
20, /oi, represents that an attempt is being made to 
get the word Diotima from Mrs. Forbes. "Gima 
dion " does "look the length," and the syllables re- 
versed are not unlike "dio tima." It is also true 
that in Mrs. Forbes' later attempts, after my mind 
was attracted to the Symposium, the word Dion 
actually emerged (Proceedings, Vol. XX, p. 244). 

It never occurred to me to see this meaning in 
"Gima dion "; I was probably put off by the Greek 
yefxa Atos, which follows ; for that makes the 
vowel after g short e, whereas the i of tima is long J. 
But the shortening of the vowel may be due to a 
desire to make a sort of sense of "Gema dion," for 
the words ye/xaAio? mean — or rather seem to mean 
— "is full of Zeus." 

If you are right it certainly makes the Sym- 
posium episode neater. For then, after the allusion 
in my script of May 31, comes on September 20, /oi, 



THE 'SYMPOSIUM 1 EPISODE 37 

the suggestion that the word (skilfully disguised) 
is to be found in Mrs. Forbes' writing. 

Then, when this came to nothing, and a year 
afterwards I read the Dialogue, " they " seized the 
opportunity to draw Mrs. Forbes' attention to my 
reading, and so, by fixing my attention on the Sym- 
posium, to get an allusion to the subject and the 
name " Dio-" in her script. In this case it looks as if 
the attention of the "controls " had been steadily 
fixed on that passage in the Symposium, as the 
subject for what we now call a " correspondence " 
between Mrs. Forbes and me. 

Mrs. Forbes' script does not at this date 
show any reference to the Symposium. The 
next reference to the subject occurs in Mrs. 
VerralPs script of June 27, 1902 : — 

Peace on earth tranquillitas super omnia maria 
terrasque omnes. 1 Then listen to the fiery news — an 
arch of light bridges the chasm between earth and 
sky (p. 314)- 

This is rather indefinite, but it obviously 
contains the thought that Love is the bond 
between the worlds, which is the main idea 
of the passage in the Symposium. 

On November 26 Mrs. Forbes' script 
says : — 

H. wishes Mrs. Verrall to open the last book she 
read for him in which is the true word of the test 
(p. 241). 

This script ended with the injunction, "let 
the letter be sent to-night." 

1 Translation: "Calm over all the seas and all 
the lands." 



38 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

This missive reached Mrs. Verrall 
November 28, and she tells us that it com- 
pletely puzzled her until at length she re- 
membered that during November 26 and 
27 her thoughts had been much occupied 
with Plato's Dialogue of the Symposium, 
having arranged to lecture on it on November 
29. 

On the chance that this was the book 
referred to in Mrs. Forbes' script, Mrs. Ver- 
rall deliberately set her mind upon this 
Dialogue before writing automatically on 
November 28, hoping that by so doing she 
might enable Mrs. Forbes to receive a clearer 
reference to the subject. Had this occurred, 
thought transference would have been the 
ready explanation, but no reference was found 
in either script until nearly a month later, 
when, on December 18, Mrs. Forbes* script 
contained an obvious reference to this sub- 
ject : — 

(a) . . . word . . . H. make it — . . . with the 
Dionysus l Dion— 

(b) Edmund writes to tell the friend — 

who writes with Talbot — word of the Test will be 
Dy . . . Will you give the sense of the message 
write to Mrs. Verrall and say the word will be found 
in Myers' own . . . will you send a message to 

1 Mrs. Forbes marks Dionysus as a guess. 



THE 'SYMPOSIUM 1 EPISODE 39 

Mrs. Verrall to say H. will see 1 with her on Friday 
— will you be so kind as to send this to-day? 

(c) . . . Talbot writes to say you can be sure . . . 
it is one of the most Hymeneal Songs — Love's oldest 
melody (p. 244). 

On this Mrs. Verrall makes the following 
interesting comments : — 

Not the least interesting point in this script is 
the dramatisation. 

The first communicator with great difficulty pro- 
duces only an attempt at a word. The second 
describes that word as part of a test, says that it 
concerns me, and attempts to add a further point for 
its identification. The third, in a few words, written 
with comparative ease, gives a description of the 
book such as suits very well the supposed situation, 
viz. that of an intermediary not himself acquainted 
with the passage in question but endeavouring to 
help in the transmission under difficulties of a some- 
what technical allusion (p. 245). 

That Mrs. Forbes herself was completely 
unaware of the significance of what she wrote 
is obvious from her letter enclosing the 
script, in which she said, " If it turns out that 
you have anything to do with weddings to- 
morrow, or are reading any special book with 
a hymeneal song in it, I shall be very much 
delighted." 

1 Or "sit"; word not clear. Sir Oliver Lodge 
has since stated that "H." represents the "Myers 
control." When Mrs. Verrall's report was pub- 
lished it was considered undesirable to publish his 
name. 



40 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

Mrs. Verrall received this on December 
19, 1902, and on that date her script con- 
tained the sentence : — 

In the sealed book l is the word the message to 
men, the new and old Diatessaron. 

This was followed by the drawing of a 
book. 

The interpretation which should be given 
to the "sealed book" and the "word" is 
somewhat uncertain. Was the book referred 
to Myers 5 book in which he proclaimed his 
"message," his joyful news to men? 

But if so, why is it called a " sealed book " ? 
It looks as if there were here an indication of 
confusion between two distinct subjects. A 
sealed pamphlet had already been mentioned 
in the writing, and the incident of the sealed 
pamphlet may perhaps throw some light on a 
perplexing circumstance which will be dealt 
with in the next chapter. 

On December 26, 1902, Mrs. Verrall was 
assured by her script, "Mrs. Forbes will get 

1 Tatian's Harmony of the Four Gospels is 
known as Tatian's Diatessaron; of this Mrs. Verrall 
was aware, but she only subsequently learned that 
there is also a Pythagorean Diatessaron. This 
renders the expression "new and old Diatessaron" 
appropriate. 



THE 'SYMPOSIUM' EPISODE 41 

the word I want/' This assurance was re- 
peated in January 1903. 

On January 6 (1903) we find in Mrs. 
Forbes' script apparent attempts to write the 
word Symposium : — 

Son . . . son suspuro suspiro sryseosymon H. eros. 1 

Faint scribbles follow, containing a .sug- 
gestion of Greek letters, but these are, not 
verifiable. 

On January 11 unmistakable isolated 
Greek characters are legible, a>, e, p, <r, <p, $, a; 
and are described as part of an uncompleted 
test (p. 246). 

Mrs. Forbes does not know the Greek alphabet, 
and has never consciously written Greek characters 
(p. 246). 

On January 21 (1903), after a reference to 
the Symposium, comes the sentence, "Wait 
for the word from Mrs. Forbes," and this is 
immediately followed by an obvious refer- 
ence to some papers Dr. Verrall had lost. 
Mrs. Verrall writes : — 

In the last half of January there came, closely 
following upon one another, five statements which I 
interpreted to mean that the passage in question was 
alluded to and emphasised in Mr. Myers' forth- 
coming book, Human Personality (p. 315). 

1 i. e. The god of Love? 



42 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

These are as follows : — 

January 14, 1903. The book will help — our word 
is there contained. 

January 22, 1903. In Myers' book is a word 
that ought to make things plain — read it to see — not 
at the head of a chapter, but quoted in the text — it 
should have been and surely is — 

January 23, 1903. Read the book for me and look 
there for the helping word. 

January 25, 1903. Between God and man is the 
Sai/xoviov ti — you will see that quoted in the book — 
Love is the bond. 

January 31, 1903. Look for what I have told you 
in the book — Myers' book. The passage is import- 
ant, "To the ends of the earth." That is the 
countersign (pp. 315, 316). 

Mrs. Verrall did not know at the time of 
writing whether these statements were cor- 
rect. Mr. Myers had never talked over his 
book with her, and the only portions she had 
seen in proof were Chapter VI with its 
appendix and the headings of chapters. She 
says she had no means of knowing whether 
it was likely that her script was correct, and 
she was very anxious to test this. On receiv- 
ing the volume, therefore, which was pub- 
lished on February 10, 1903, she searched it 
with considerable interest, and she found that 
Vol. I, pp. 112, 115, contains paragraphs 
dealing with Plato's view of love, and par- 
ticularly with the above-mentioned Dialogue 



THE 'SYMPOSIUM 1 EPISODE 43 

in the Symposium. Frederic Myers says, 
"Love becomes, as Plato has it, the Inter- 
preter and Mediator between God and man." 

In Vol. I, chap, iii, p. 113, we find a 
brief sketch of the ideas expressed in the 
Dialogue, and in a footnote he speaks of this 
utterance, placed by Plato in the mouth of 
Diotima, as unsurpassed among the utter- 
ances of antiquity. 

It is obvious, therefore, that the passage in 
Plato's Symposium occupied a large place in 
Myers' thoughts when writing his book. 
Moreover, in Vol. II, p. 282, we find a further 
allusion to it which should be compared with 
the script of June 27, 1902. 

Speaking of telepathy he says, "Again its 
action was traced across a gulf greater than 
any space of earth or ocean, and it bridged 
the interval between spirits incarnate and 
discarnate, between the visible and the in- 
visible world." 

Further comment is not necessary. The 
episode requires close attention to be appreci- 
ated, but it repays the trouble which its study 
involves. No one who considers the matter 
carefully can fail to be impressed by the 
indications of purpose which are apparent in 
the development of this incident. Beginning 



44 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

with an early attempt to impress Mrs. Verrall 
(and perhaps also Mrs. Forbes) with the name 
" Diotima," the control works persistently to- 
wards the idea that the passage in the Sym- 
posium (containing the Dialogue) would be 
found in " Myers' own " work, not at that 
time published. 



CHAPTER V 

THE SEALED ENVELOPE 

Frederic Myers, before his death, en- 
trusted to the care of Sir Oliver Lodge a 
sealed envelope containing some words which 
it was his intention to try to communicate 
after his death. Of this fact Mrs. Verrall was 
aware. 

On July 13, 1904, a statement was made in 
her script to the effect that this envelope con- 
tained the passage from the Symposium about 
Love. 

July 13, 1904 — I have long told you of the contents 
of the envelope. Myers' sealed envelope left with 
Lodge, you have not understood. It has in it the 
words from the Symposium about Love bridging the 
chasm. 

They are written on a piece of single paper, folded 
and put in an envelope. That is inside another 
envelope which has my initial at the bottom, left 
hand, and there is a date on the envelope too, the 
outside envelope not in my writing. The whole 
thing has been put with other papers in a box, a 
small box clamped with metal. (Part liii, p. 424.) 

(Here follows a reference to another enve- 
45 



46 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

lope supposed to have been left by Professor 
Sidgwick.) 

Mrs. Verrairs script repeatedly urged that 
this sealed envelope should be opened. 
When this was done, however, the statement 
as to its contents was found to be incorrect. 
No explanation of the error has been found, 
or, at least, no conclusive explanation; there 
are, however, a few considerations which may 
throw a little light upon it and may suggest 
a clue as to the possible causes of the 
erroneous statement. 

Between April 27 and May 8, 1901, there 
occurred repeated references in the script to 
a lost book, indicating that it was to be 
searched for in a certain room (recognised 
from the description as Mrs. Sidgwick's 
room), and adding, " It is a test." Mrs. Sidg- 
wick had forgotten altogether about the exist- 
ence of this pamphlet, which was not found 
until nearly two years later, i. c. in December 
1903, and then was discovered in the place 
described in the script. 

The following extract from Mrs. Verrairs 
report refers to this matter : — 

"When in the spring of 1901 (April and 
May) Mrs. Sidgwick was asked if, among Dr. 
Sidgwick's papers, there was such a sealed 



THE SEALED ENVELOPE 47 

packet, she replied that there was not. . . . 
It thus appears that at the time when in- 
quiries were made of Mrs. Sidgwick about a 
sealed packet the script was writing a descrip- 
tion of a place containing some sort of book — 
a place corresponding closely enough with 
the place where the missing pamphlet was 
found/' (Part liii, p. 198.) 

References to a sealed packet, or envelope, 
occur in many other places, associated some- 
times with Professor Sidgwick, sometimes 
with Dr. R. Hodgson. 

Even after Mrs. Verrall had learned that 
the latter had no such envelope her hand still 
wrote as if he had one. It is not surprising 
that the communications concerning the pas- 
sage in the Symposium and those connected 
with a sealed packet should have become 
mixed together in her mind. Both these 
ideas, as we have seen, were associated with 
tests which had been verified. One had been 
verified in connection with the passage from 
the Symposium, quoted in Frederic Myers' 
book, and the other by finding among Dr. 
Sidgwick's papers, in the place specified, a 
missing pamphlet in a sealed envelope. 

It seems probable that the definite asser- 
tion of July 13, 1904, is due to a mistaken 



48 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

inference of her subliminal mind, based on 
this confusion. The character of the script 
of this date rather favours this hypothesis. If 
it is compared carefully with what has gone 
before, with the broken sentences and obscure 
allusions quoted in the preceding chapter, it 
will be observed that the difference between 
the clear flowing statement of July 13 and 
those other scripts is very marked, and may 
well be due to the fact that the earlier scripts 
really do give us the halting attempts of a 
" control " to express ideas through Mrs. Ver- 
rall's brain, whereas the fluent writing of 
July 13 emanated mainly from her own 
subliminal consciousness. 

Sensitives are very liable to mistake their 
own inferences for impressions received, and 
it. is often difficult, sometimes impossible, for 
them to distinguish between the two. This is 
also more likely to occur if the subject occu- 
pies the sensitive's mind in its normal state 
in the intervals between waiting; for in this 
case it is well-nigh impossible to exclude con- 
jectures and surmises. I do not, of course, 
intend to suggest that Mrs. Verrall had con- 
sciously associated the sealed envelope with 
the Symposium, but merely that the tw 7 o sub- 
jects had become associated in her subliminal 



THE SEALED ENVELOPE 49 

consciousness; and since it is this region 
which is tapped through automatic writing, it 
would be natural that this connection should 
appear in the script. 

This interpretation is confirmed by Mrs. 
Holland's writings. In her script the error is 
attributed to the intervention of Mrs. Verrall's 
own thoughts. The passage is an interesting 
one and deserves careful consideration. In 
order to appreciate it some extracts must be 
quoted from Miss Johnson's report. 

The envelope had been opened on 
December 13, 1904, and the result was pub- 
lished in the S.P.R. Journal for January 1905, 
which appeared on the 17th. 1 "The West- 
minster Gazette on the same date contained a 
paragraph stating briefly the facts given in the 
Journal, and this paragraph was widely copied 
in other English papers." (Part lv, p. 242.) 

On February 15, 1905, Mrs. Holland wrote 
to Miss Johnson : — 

I have discontinued my practice of automatic 
writing for nearly a year, as the shock and jar of 
any chance interruption seemed out of all proportion 

1 From an evidential point of view, of course, this 
fact renders the subsequent allusion to the subject 
in Mrs. Holland's script less valuable than it would 
have been had the dates been in reverse order, but it 
is still of considerable interest. 



50 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

to the value of anything I obtained. However, this 
morning I had an unexpected impulse to write — 
sentences which as usual mean nothing to me per- 
sonally — and I enclose the message. . . . 

[M.] "Under other conditions I should say how 
much I regretted the failure of the envelope test, and 
I do regret it because it was a disappointment to 
you — otherwise it is too trivial to waste a thought 
upon — 

..." Imperfect instruments imperfect means of 
communication. The living mind, however sensitive, 
intrudes its own conception upon the signalled 
message. Even now my greatest difficulty is to 
combat the suggestion of the mind whose hand 
writes this, though the owner tries to be passive. 
Short of trance conditions which are open to even 
graver objections, the other mind is our greatest 
difficulty. And they tire and flag so soon. 

" Eternally, 

"F. 
11 ' Life touching lips with Immortality.' " 1 

(Part lv, pp. 241, 242.) 

Miss Johnson, on receiving this, naturally 
concluded that Mrs. Holland had seen the 
newspaper accounts of the incident; she 
therefore wrote and inquired of her whether 
she had heard anything at all in connection 
with the S.P.R. since coming to England. 
Mrs. Holland replied : — 

I very seldom hear the name of your society 
mentioned, and as I am in the habit of concealing 
the interest I take in it, I never hear any news con- 

1 D. G. Rossetti, for a Venetian Pastoral by 
Giorgione. 



THE SEALED ENVELOPE 51 

cerning it or its members. I have never seen any 
of the Proceedings, and Human Personality is the 
only book in connection with it I have ever read. 

I remember an article in the December Fort- 
nightly on "The Progress of Psychical Research" 
(P- 2 43)- 

(This article contained no mention of the 
sealed envelope or of Sir Oliver Lodge.) 

Miss Johnson did not refer to the subject 
again in writing, but in October 1905 she had 
a long interview with Mrs. Holland. She 
then learned that this lady had no conscious 
recollection of having heard anything at all 
about the opening of the sealed envelope. 

She remembered the passage in Human Person- 
ality recommending such experiments to be made 
(Vol. II, p. 499), and told me of another magazine 
article which she had read some time ago, which she 
thought might have contained reference to the sub- 
ject. (1 afterwards read this article, and found in it 
only a reference to supposed communications from 
Mr. Myers through automatic writing.) 

At a later interview with Mrs. Holland (May 29, 
1906) I showed her the paragraph in the West- 
minster Gazette about the opening of the sealed 
envelope, and cross-questioned her as to the possi- 
bility of her normal knowledge of it. She repeated 
that she was certain that she had never heard of it 
till I told her, and that she thought it quite impos- 
sible that she could have seen it and forgotten it 
(p. 244). 

Whilst we are on this subject it may be 
well to consider some other possible causes 
E 2 



52 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

of confusion which must be reckoned with 
by students. 

It is not only the sensitive on this side who 
is liable to become confused, the controlling 
intelligence is liable to be so also. For if 
sensitives can receive impressions from their 
" controls " it is obvious that, the condition of 
rapport once established, the control may also 
be liable to receive the thoughts of the sensi- 
tive. This reciprocal telepathy, whilst it is 
essential for communication, is probably the 
source of many errors ; since fusion of thought 
at the moment when it is of urgent import- 
ance that the " control " should formulate a 
distinct idea may frustrate the very object of 
the contact, and may result in the sensitive 
receiving his own thought returned to him, 
mixed up, perhaps, with thoughts of the com- 
municator. It is easy to see how misleading 
such a mixture of ideas might be. 

In an early report on Mrs. Piper's trance 
(published in 1892) Dr. Hodgson points out 
that when the communications lack lucidity 
this is, apparently, not always due to the 
sitter, and he quotes the following remark 
made by "Dr. Phinuit," who at that time 
purported to be Mrs. Piper's chief con- 
trol. 



THE SEALED ENVELOPE 53 

Sometimes when I come here, do you know, 
actually it is hard work for me to get control of the 
medium. Sometimes I think that I am almost like 
the medium, and sometimes not at all. Then [when 
the control is incomplete] I am weak and confused. 
(Proceedings, Part xxi, p. 9.) 

I will here add an entry made in a note- 
book of my own after reading the automatic 
script of a friend, as it bears on this point 
under consideration. 

March 30, 1903 — Record indicates anxiety on the 
part of X. (*. e. the communicator), lest control 
should mean a merging of individualities — a danger 
to both— 

"But you hold on," he adds, as if this saved the 
situation. 

That is to say, my friend's capacity to 
" hold on " to her own distinct personality 
safe-guarded both from the risk of fusion of 
thought and consciousness: 

Further I find the following extract : — 

" Glory is the ineffable majesty of the 
eternal God ; " the communicator adds, 
"partly your thought, I put mine behind it — 
to shine through, that's the way we corre- 
spond, interact on each other's minds." 

Again another incident which has come 
under my observation corroborates this. 

A young friend of my own used at one time 
to write and speak automatically, and some- 



54 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

times went into trance. On one occasion, in 
the trance state, the "control" said, the 
medium is " dreaming, and her dreams get in 
my way," and then added that the word 
" Gehenna" was in the medium's, mind, and 
offered an obstruction. Being at a loss to 
understand how such a word should be in the 
girl's mind, she was questioned on the point 
when she had come out of the trance state. 
She then said she did not know what the word 
meant, and that she had been wondering as 
to its meaning during the previous day. This 
incident suggests the kind of obstructions 
which may have to be overcome by both the 
" control " and the sensitive. 

Through the hand of the same girl a fuller 
account of these difficulties was written in 
reply to an inquiry as to the source of errone- 
ous messages. 

It may be of interest in this connection to 

quote this in full. 

I do not think you have been deceived, but I have 
no doubt that confusion has crept in. It does so to 
such an extraordinary extent that you would marvel 
if you could watch the process. Let me try to 
describe to you a little bit of our feelings when we 
control. We find ourselves entering a dense mist. 
It blinds us, deafens us, and clogs our senses. Then 
we seek to make some movement, often not knowing 
what will be the result. The result is often — is 
usually — totally unexpected by ourselves. 



THE SEALED ENVELOPE 55 

It is as though you meddled with some large 
machine whose properties you do not understand. 
It is quite terrifying sometimes if you are very con- 
fused and cannot understand what your machine is 
doing. As you remain isolated, lonely, confused, 
some word floats through the medium's atmosphere. 
You seize on it with gladness, believing very often 
in your confusion either that it is the message you 
had yourself intended sending, or that it is a word 
from your spirit friend reminding you of what you 
had wanted to say — One idea once started in a 
medium's mind often starts and suggests another 
idea, and often then a whole story is fabricated, the 
communicator sincerely believing that he is speaking 
the truth. 

Then when we leave the medium we look back on 
a collection of falsehoods which quite appal us and 
can only wait for another opportunity of rectifying 
the mistake — It is a heavenly relief to return to 
the spirit atmosphere — But you must not think 
that this is the case with all spirits, for to many of 
us it is comparatively easy — 

To myself especially so now, though at first it was 
not so. 

In reply to the inquiry whether the power 
of communicating between that state and our 
own would grow stronger, in connection with 
the work generally, the following reply was 
given : — 

Yes, certainly — They intend perfecting the work 
which is at present only half begun. 

Question. What did you mean by some word 
floats through the medium's atmosphere? 

Answer. Either in the medium's mind or spoken 
by one of the circle. 

This script came through the hand of a girl 



56 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

who had read little of the literature on the 
subject, though she was doubtless familiar 
with the idea that many difficulties attend the 
effort to communicate. 

If this graphic description correctly indi- 
cates the nature of these difficulties, it is easy 
to understand how such an error as that con- 
nected with the sealed envelope may have 
arisen. 

In a report published in June 1909 Sir 
Oliver Lodge expresses in not dissimilar lan- 
guage what he conceives to be the condition 
during some of these attempts to communi- 
cate. He says : — 

They are attempts at doing something rather 
beyond the power of the operators — who arrive 
approximately at their aim without achieving what 
they want exactly. They are trying to get some- 
thing definite through, let us say, and something like 
it comes. Occasionally they hardly know it comes, 
it is a puzzle to them as to us, and often they don't 
know what it is that we have got ; but sometimes 
they too seem to be spectators, aware of the result, 
and to be worried by the misconception and the 
misunderstanding which they see will arise, but 
which they are powerless to prevent — except, as 
here, by trying to instruct us and awaken our intelli- 
gences into a condition in which we too can under- 
stand and grapple with the unavoidable difficulties 
of the situation. (Part lviii,. p. 218.) 

It is interesting to compare these two quo- 
tations, remembering that one was written 



THE SEALED ENVELOPE 57 

through the hand of a girl who had not 
studied the Piper records, and the other from 
the pen of a Professor who is summing up 
some of the impressions made on him by pro- 
longed study of these and other experiences. 

It is very important that students should 
realise that such causes of error are factors 
more or less present in all psychic experi- 
ences. They have been dealt with at length 
by Dr. Richard Hodgson in Proceedings, 
Part xxxiii, which students would do well to 
read carefully. 

The causes of confusion may be classed as 
follows : — 

i. First, the fact that thoughts telepathic- 
ally received from those still in the flesh may 
blend with, or be mistaken for, messages 
from the discarnate. 

2. The thoughts of the medium, whether in 
trance or out of trance, may act in a similar 
way. 

3. The Intelligence desiring to communi- 
cate may be unable to concentrate his mind 
sufficiently to control the medium's brain, and 
may have to use an intermediary, 1 who may 
fail to receive the message correctly. 

1 This will be further explained in dealing with 
Mrs. Piper's trance. 



58 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

4. Several spirits may attempt to com- 
municate their thoughts to the medium at the 
same time, and may interfere with each other 
without being aware that they are doing so. 

5. The eagerness or possible agitation of 
the communicating spirit is also a disturbing 
cause ; and to this-may be added the fact — 

6. That the very act of controlling another 
brain causes partial oblivion. Perhaps the 
common experience of forgetting a name 
when we are particularly desirous of recalling 
it may be a somewhat analogous experience. 
We say, " I shall remember it if I don't try 
to think of it." l 

1 The subject of confusion arising from possible 
difficulties of communication is further dealt with in 
Objections to Spiritualism (Answered), by H. A. 
Dallas, published by the London Spiritualist Alliance, 
110, St. Martin's Lane, W.C. 



CHAPTER VI 

MRS. PIPER'S MEDIUMSHIP 

As Mrs. Piper's mediumship has played 
such an important part in the more recent 
developments in connection with Frederic 
Myers, it is desirable to put the reader in 
possession of some of the particulars con- 
cerning this remarkable sensitive which have 
been published from time to time by the 
S.P.R. 

The earliest account of her appeared in 
1890. (Part xvii.) She had then been more 
or less under observation for about five years. 
Professor William James made her acquaint- 
ance in the autumn of 1885. In the report 
which he made to the American S.P.R. of 
his experiences with her he said : "lam per- 
suaded of the medium's honesty and of the 
genuineness of her trance." He attempted 
to hypnotise her, but succeeded only "as 
far as muscular phenomena and automatic 
imitation of speech and gesture go; but," he 

59 



60 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

adds, " I could not affect her consciousness, 
or otherwise get her beyond this point. Her 
condition in this semi-hypnosis is very 
different from her medium trance. Sugges- 
tions to the 'control' that he should make 
her recollect after the medium trance what 
she had been saying were accepted, but had 
no result ... no clear signs of thought 
transference as tested by the naming of cards 
during the waking state. . . . Trials of the 
' willing game/ and attempts at automatic 
writing gave similarly negative results." 
(Part xvii, pp. 653, 654.) 

Professor Hyslop has recently stated that 
he, too, has found her not suggestible ; he 
writes in the Journal of the American S.P.R., 
October 1908 : — 

I believe only one person has ever been able to 
hypnotise Mrs. Piper effectively. But in her trance 
she is not suggestible at all as that is understood 
by Psychopathologists. . . . Suggestibility means 
imitative and apparently automatic response to an 
operator's command or request. Now Mrs. Piper 
does not do this at all (p. 545). 

The importance of this fact will be recog- 
nised later when we discuss the development 
called " Cross-correspondences." 

The testimony to her honesty borne so 
unequivocably by Professor William James 



MRS. PIPER'S MEDIUMSHIP 61 

is corroborated by Mr. Myers, Dr. Richard 
Hodgson, Professor Hyslop and Sir Oliver 
Lodge. The latter writes : — 

That the Phenomenon is a genuine one, however 
it is to be explained, I now regard as absolutely 
certain ; and I make the following two statements 
with the utmost confidence : — 

i. Mrs. Piper's attitude is not one of deception. 

2. No conceivable deception on the part of Mrs. 
Piper can explain the facts. (Part xvii, p. 446.) 

Any one desiring further assurance on this 
point should read the opening pages of the 
two reports published in Parts xvii and xxi 
of Proceedings, in which are described the 
precautions taken by investigators to satisfy 
themselves with regard to the honesty of the 
Medium and the reality of her trance, of 
which Professor James affirms he has not 
"the remotest doubt," at the same time 
giving it as his conviction that Mrs. Piper 
is " an absolutely simple and genuine 
person." (Part xvii, p. 654.) 

She seemed anxious that the phenomena 
connected with her state should be investi- 
gated by scientific men, as she did not 
profess herself to understand it at all, and 
she showed " the fullest readiness to accept 
suggestions in any way whatever, for the 
purpose of ascertaining the meaning of the 



62 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

Phinuit personality," who formerly mani- 
fested in her trance state. Both she and 
Phinuit gave full permission to Dr. Hodg- 
son to try any tests which might seem to 
him desirable. The Committee appointed 
by the American S.P.R. to investigate Mrs. 
Piper's case, report in a similar way of the 
aid afforded them by the "generous co- 
operation of the Medium." (Part xxi, p. 2.) 
The following particulars quoted from Sir 
Oliver Lodge's report are of considerable 
interest : — 

These trances cannot always be induced at pleasure. 
A state of quiet expectancy or " self-suggestion " will 
usually bring one on ; but sometimes the attempt 
altogether fails. . . . The first time that it occurred 
(as Mrs. Piper informs us), it came as an unwelcome 
surprise. . . . There was often a marked difference 
between the first few minutes of a trance and the 
remaining time. On such occasions almost all that 
was of value would be told in the first few minutes ; 
and the remaining talk would consist of vague gener- 
alities or mere repetitions of what had already been 
given. 1 Phinuit, as will be seen, always professed 
himself to be a spirit communicating with spirits ; 
and he used to say that he remembered their messages 
for a few minutes after "entering into the medium," 
and then became confused. Ke was not, however, 
apparently able to depart when his budget of facts 
was empty. (Part xvii, p. 441.) 

1 The student should observe this tendency to 
repetition, which is a marked feature in experiences 
of this sort and a factor to be reckoned with. 



MRS. PIPERS MEDIUMSHIP 63 

In the trance state, under the Phinuit " con- 
trol," she seemed to be partially anaesthetic, 
sensations of touch being somewhat en- 
feebled, 1 and the senses of taste and smell 
apparently lacking. (Part xxi, pp. 4, 5.) 

The communications which purported to be 
made at the earlier stages of her medium- 
ship, were not by writing but through the 
voice. 

Speaking of the voice of the Phinuit " con- 
trol," Sir Oliver Lodge says : — 

It sounded like a man, and I quite forgot that it 
was a woman who was speaking- for the rest of the 
sitting; the whole manner and conversation were 
masculine . . . the occasional irrelevance faintly 
coming in every now and then amid the more con- 
stant coherent and vigorous communication, re- 
minded me of listening at a telephone, where, when- 
ever your main correspondent is silent, you hear the 
dim and meaningless fragment of a city's gossip, till 
back again comes the voice obviously addressed to 
you and speaking with firmness and decision. . . . 
The details given of my family are just such as one 
might imagine obtained by a perfect stranger sur- 
rounded by the whole of one's relations in a group 
and able to converse freely but hastily with one after 
the other; not knowing them and being rather con- 

1 A medium with whom physical manifestations 
occurred, but who did not go into the trance state, 
experienced the opposite ; she has told me that when 
phenomena were occurring she has become painfully 
and acutely sensitive to sound and even to the touch 
of a fly lighting upon her. 



64 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

fused with their number and half understood mes- 
sages and personalities. (Part xvii, pp. 144, 145.) 

Mrs. Piper's health appears to have bene- 
fited rather than otherwise from her strange 
state. Previous to the year 1893 ner health 
was not good, in that year she underwent an 
operation necessitated by an injury received 
some time before in a collision with an ice- 
sled; another operation was performed in 
February 1896, and "since then," Dr. 
Hodgson says, "her health has been uni- 
formly better — and she may now be regarded 
as a thoroughly healthy woman." (Part 
xxxiii, p. 288.) This statement was endorsed 
in a personal letter which I received from 
Mr. Myers in December 1898, in which he 
says : — 

The actual facts have been carefully watched 
throughout, and noted by first-hand observers, 
medical and otherwise, 1 in successive Reports. In 
her earlier years of trance Mrs. Piper would give 
various jerks and gasps during entry into and exit 
from trance. She was unconscious of this and made 
no complaints, nor was there ever any ground to 
suppose them injurious to her. Of recent years, e. g. 
when I saw her in 1893, and ever since — she has 
passed into and out of trance, just as she would into 
and out of sleep, with perfect calm. . . . The probable 
view is that the trances — or the "controls" — have 
improved Mrs. Piper's health. 

1 Professor William James is a physician as well 
as a psychologist. 



MRS. PIPER'S MEDIUMSHIP 65 

It is interesting, in view of later develop- 
ments both of experience and opinion, to 
observe the guarded comments made by Mr. 
Myers, Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr. Hodgson and 
other investigators in the earlier reports in 
Parts xvii and xxi. None of them were at 
that time prepared to commit themselves to 
any interpretation, even provisionally, as a 
working hypothesis; but various possible 
hypotheses were under consideration. These 
will be referred to in the next chapter. 

In Dr. Hodgson's Report published in 
1892 (Part xxi), after referring to thought 
transference, clairvoyance, secondary person- 
ality, etc., and endeavouring to show how far 
they might apply to some of the phenomena, 
he concludes by saying : — 

The hypothesis which for a long time seemed to 
me the most satisfactory is that of auto-hypnotic 
trance in which a secondary personality of Mrs. Piper 
either erroneously believes itself to be, or consciously 
and falsely pretends to be, the "spirit " of a deceased 
human being. . . . Several facts which I have men- 
tioned . . . seem to point strongly towards this view. 
My confidence, however, in this explanation has been 
considerably shaken by further familiarity with the 
Phinuit personality and other allied " manifestations " 
of Mrs. Piper's trance-state, and I have no certain 
convictions that any single theory which has been 
put forward is the real one. (Part xxi, pp. 57, 58.) 

To this he adds a note at a later date : — 



66 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

The foregoing report is based upon sittings not 
later than 1891. Mrs. Piper has given some sittings 
very recently which materially strengthen the evi- 
dence for the existence of some faculty that goes 
beyond thought transference from the sitter and 
which certainly prima facie appear to render some 
form of the spiritistic hypothesis more plausible (p. 58). 

It was this hypothesis to which he ulti- 
mately committed himself in the report 
published in 1898. (Part xxxiii.) 1 In this 
report he deals very fully with the reasons 
which led him to this conclusion, and with 
the probable difficulties which have to be 
surmounted by any spirit trying to use the 
organism of another as a channel of self 
expression. The whole subject is dealt with 
in a masterly manner, with clearness, with 
weighty reasoning and comprehension, the 
result of long and patient experiment 
through upwards of ten years. 

In this report he points out that, whilst 
the errors and confusions are not incompre- 
hensible, if we take into consideration the 
great difficulties and the conditions gener- 
ally, they "are not the results we should 
expect on the hypothesis of telepathy from 
the living," and that the spirit hypothesis 
is that which most satisfactorily accounts for 
these and other facts. 

1 A document of great importance to any student 
who wishes to gain a clear grasp of the subject. 



CHAPTER VII 

THEORIES WHICH HAVE BEEN SUGGESTED 

Although Dr. Hodgson stated in his 
report of 1898, that he no longer had any 
doubt that the chief communicators through 
Mrs. Piper are veritably the personalities 
which they profess to be {Proceedings, Part 
xxxiii, p. 406), he did not, at that date, claim 
that the correctness of his conclusions was 
absolutely proven, but only that the weight of 
the evidence was strongly, and in his opinion 
convincingly, in their favour. I will now 
briefly touch upon some of his reasons for 
regarding this hypothesis as a more adequate 
one than any other, but readers must bear 
in mind that it is impossible to do full justice 
to his argument in so cursory a survey. 

To begin with, he attached some weight 
to the fact that the communicators not only 
persistently asserted themselves to be the 
spirits of deceased persons, but also pro- 
duced marvellous simulation of the de- 
f 2 67 



68 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

ceased, accompanied by their specific 
memories and " by the presentation of each 
character in its unity, showing a clear self- 
consciousness, a working intelligence of its 
own, and a morality in no case less than 
that of the persons concerned when living, 
but showing rather a more definite upward 
movement, a stronger determination towards 
the things that are higher." 

He could not reconcile "all this appar- 
ently complete independence and power of 
reasoning and lofty ethical aspirations " with 
the supposition that they were " either lying 
or mistaken about the fact of their existence 
itself, and must be assumed to be, one and 
all, merely fragments of Mrs. Piper." (Part 
xxxiii, p. 369.) 

To those who are only superficially 
acquainted with the phenomena the hypo- 
thesis that these personalities are " fragments 
of Mrs. Piper," that is to say, secondary 
personalities of Mrs. Piper, is likely to seem 
more probable than to those who have closely 
and profoundly studied them. Persons who 
have not paid much attention to scientific 
definitions have sometimes a vague general 
notion that a " secondary personality " is 
capable of displaying all sorts of super- 



THEORIES SUGGESTED 69 

normal faculties,, and that there is no limit 
to the capacity for acquiring information with 
which it may be credited. 

The following paragraph from a letter by 
Professor Hyslop l will show that this notion 
is quite erroneous. 

The Scientist has to have a term to denote the 
subconscious production of matter which is neither 
supernormal nor spiritistic, but derivable from the 
normal experience of the subject, and latent to the 
normal consciousness and memory. 

As secondary personality is known to the Scien- 
tist it has no traces of the supernormal. . . . We 
must remember that the term secondary personality 
is not a name for any special power of the mind other 
than the normal, as many people have supposed, but 
is as I have denned it. . . . 

Mrs. Piper shows no traces of secondary person- 
ality as defined and recognised in psychiatry or 
pathology. 

In Professor Hyslop's opinion, therefore, 
the hypothesis of secondary personality will 
not account for the supernormal acquisition 
of knowledge. 

Is the hypothesis of telepathy more satis- 
factory? Are the facts such as to justify 
the conclusion that Mrs. Piper (in the trance 
state) obtains information from the minds 

1 Not intended for publication, but quoted with his 
kind permission, 



70 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

of living persons, and, impersonating the 
character of the deceased, retails this infor- 
mation to their friends? 

We must bear in mind that the information 
imparted is often unknown to any person 
present, so that, if the theory of thought 
transference (or telepathy) be accepted, it 
will be necessary to assume that the agents 
are persons at a distance from the percipient, 
that she has, subliminally, access to the 
minds of persons of whose existence she has, 
normally, no knowledge, and that she can 
receive from their minds facts of which they 
are not consciously thinking. 

Now it can be claimed as experimentally 
demonstrated that ideas consciously in the 
mind of one person can, when thought has 
been concentrated on these ideas, be trans- 
ferred to the mind of another person at a 
distance, and such transference may take 
place without the agent having the intention 
of transmitting anything; but it cannot be 
claimed that the kind of thought-transfer- 
ence which has to be assumed to explain the 
phenomena which occur with Mrs. Piper, has 
ever been experimentally demonstrated at all. 

Sir Oliver Lodge lays emphasis on this 
fact in his discussion of the case. He says : — 



THEORIES SUGGESTED 71 

Whereas the kind of thought-transference which 
has been to my knowledge experimentally proved 
was a hazy and difficult recognition by one person of 
objects kept as vividly as possible in the conscious- 
ness of another person, the kind of thought-transfer- 
ence necessary to explain these sittings is of an 
altogether freer and higher order — a kind that has not 
yet been experimentally proved at all. (Part xvii, 
P- 452.) 

And further on he repeats : — 

It ought to be constantly borne in mind that this 
kind of thought-transference without consciously 
active agency has never been experimentally proved 
(P- 453). 

Dr. Hodgson endorses this statement and 
says that, judging from his own experience, 
and that of other sitters, the results "would 
prove conclusively that the information was 
not obtained by a process like that involved 
in experimental thought-transference, and 
that for the kind of telepathy, if telepathy 
it be, involved in these manifestations there 
is no experimental basis whatever." 

If the phenomena are to be attributed to 
the activities of Mrs. Piper's subliminal con- 
sciousness alone, we are compelled to make 
the arbitrary supposition, not only that Mrs. 
Piper's subliminal mind gets into relation 
with the minds of distant living persons, but 
also that this part of her consciousness is 



Tl MORS JAMJA VIT AE ? 

endowed with a selective capacity as to 
occurrences, and a discriminative faculty as 
to the persons related to the occurrences; 
otherwise the information acquired would 
not be correctly associated with the persons 
whom the events in question concerned. Her 
impersonations (if they are to be so denoted) 
manifest "emotional remembrances and 
desires and intelligence characteristic of the 
alleged communicators and urging further 
towards higher aspiration and noble deeds, 
and constantly affirming their independent 
existence." (Part xxxiii, pp. 394, 395.) 

Moreover, here is another significant fact : 
the failures which occur in many attempts 
to communicate present features of a 
character in accordance with what might be 
expected, if the communicators are what 
they claim to be, independent entities, but 
they are not such as we should expect 
on the hypothesis of telepathy from the 
living. 

Dr. Hodgson again writes : — 

Having tried the hypothesis of telepathy from the 
living for several years, and the "spirit" hypothesis 
also for several years, I have no hesitation in affirm- 
ing with the most absolute assurance that the 
" spirit " hypothesis is justified by its fruits and the 
other hypothesis is not. (Part xxxiii, pp. 392-396.) 



THEORIES SUGGESTED 73 

In this connection the statement made by 
Professor Hyslop, already quoted, should 
not be forgotten, namely, that Mrs. Piper 
in her trance is " not suggestible at all." 
(See Journal American S.P.R., Vol. II, p. 
545, October 1908.) 

The above facts deserve very careful con- 
sideration : those who desire to form a fair 
judgment as to the bearings of these pheno- 
mena as a whole must rid their minds of all 
ambiguity as to the assumptions, which it is 
necessary to make if the spirit hypothesis is 
rejected, and they must fully realise that 
neither the theory of secondary personality, 
nor that of telepathy, can be applied to 
account for the phenomena without extend- 
ing the significance of these terms to include 
faculties the existence of which has not up 
to the present been scientifically demon- 
strated; and therefore that it cannot be 
argued in favour of these interpretations 
that they have the advantage of being 
already proven. The recognition of this is 
important, for there is, perhaps, no greater 
hindrance to growth in understanding and 
conviction than to allow the imagination to 
be captivated by a hypothesis, under the 
illusion that it rests on demonstrated facts, 



74 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

when it is really only an unproven specu- 
lation. 1 

Speculation is perfectly legitimate if it is 
recognised to be merely speculation, it may 
even be useful by suggesting a direction for 
fruitful investigation, but if a false value is 
attached to it, its effect is mischievous; 
mental areas which should be receptive and 
open become prepossessed and closed, and 
thus the discovery of a truer and more 
adequate hypothesis may be indefinitely 
postponed. 

I will now give a few details as to the 
manner of Mrs. Piper's trance, and what 
appear to be the conditions under which com- 
munications are made through it. Dr. 
Hodgson says in his report that the trance 
exhibits four definite stages. In Stage I, 
Mrs. Piper appears to have two modes of 
consciousness, which he calls respectively 
normal (or supraliminal) and subliminal. In 
this stage the normal consciousness is be- 
ginning to disappear; she is still dreamily 
conscious of the persons beside her, and at 
the same time she is also dreamily conscious 

1 The Law of Psychic Phenomena, by Thomson 
Jay Hudson, appears to me to be a speculation of 
this misleading kind. 



THEORIES SUGGESTED 75 

of " spirits. " She seems to be partly con- 
scious, as it were, of two worlds. 

In Stage II her normal consciousness "has 
entirely disappeared and the subliminal con- 
sciousness only is manifest. It is as though 
her own personality held much the same rela- 
tion to her organism as Phinuit or other 
' spirit ' controller of the voice. . . . She 
seems then to possess not the dreamy con- 
sciousness of the previous stage . . . but a 
fuller and clearer consciousness . . . which 
is in direct relationship, not so much with 
our ordinary physical world, as with another 
world." 

In Stage III this consciousness also dis- 
appears; " it seems to be withdrawn from 
any direct governance of her body, the upper 
part of which becomes inert and apparently 
lifeless." The upper part of her body falls 
forward, and her head is supported upon 
cushions on a table. 

In Stage IV a very slight disturbance 
arises in the upper part of the body, "which 
becomes less inert and which appears to have 
come to some extent under the control of 
some consciousness . . . and the right hand 
and arm . . . begin to make movements 
suggesting writing." (Part xxxiii, pp. 397, 



70 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

398.) In the earlier phase of Mrs. Piper's 
experiences the voice alone was controlled; 
later, when writing developed, "the person- 
alities controlling respectively the hand and 
the voice showed apparently a complete 
independence . . . seemed to be entirely 
distinct from each other, and frequently 
carried on separate and simultaneous inde- 
pendent conversations with different sitters " 
(p. 398). 

The intelligence communicating through 
writing seems to be unaware of the effect 
which is produced on Mrs. Piper's organism, 
"as little aware as a person talking into a 
phonographic mouth-piece is aware of the 
registration on the revolving cylinder. . . . 
The writing ... is liable to include occa- 
sionally remarks not intended to be written, 
words apparently addressed by an indirect 
' communicator ' to the consciousness of the 
hand ... or by indirect communicators to 
one another ... or the wandering thoughts 
of the direct communicator were apparently 
produced in writing in incoherent fragments. 
. . . But there never seemed to be any con- 
fusion between the personality moving the 
hand . . . and the personality moving the 
voice " (pp. 398, 399). 



THEORIES SUGGESTED 77 

When passing out of trance, which Mrs. 
Piper does more slowly than when entering 
the trance state, she frequently utters words 
or sentences which seem to have been made 
to her by communicators, she seems like a 
spirit not in full control of her body. " She 
frequently has visions, apparently of distant 
or departing communicators " (p. 40). In 
this returning stage of the trance some valu- 
able utterances have been made (valuable, 
that is, from the point of view of evidence), 
and communications which could not be 
given during the state of deep trance have 
not infrequently been successfully conveyed 
during the waking stage. 

For instance, Miss Edmunds was holding 
a sitting on behalf of a lady who was not 
present. As Mrs. Piper was coming out of 
the trance, her voice shouted excitedly, 
" Tell Aleck Bousser (pseudonym) not to 
leave them alone." Miss Edmunds knew 
nothing of Aleck Bousser, but he was well 
known to Dr. Hodgson. He was an inti- 
mate friend of a communicator (G. P.), who 
was quite unconnected with the lady for 
whom the sitting was held, but who had, 
nevertheless, written a few words during the 
trance. Dr. Hodgson writes, " I sent the 



78 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

message immediately to A. B., and received 
the following reply : — 

" There certainly do happen to be some people I 
just was happening to have been debating about in 
my own mind in a way that makes your short mes- 
sage perfectly significant and natural. I am sorry 
thus to be obliged to feed your credulity, for I hate 
your spirits." 

It was subsequently explained to Dr. 
Hodgson that Madame Elisa, the sister-in- 
law of Aleck Bousser, had wished to give 
this message, but that she was not in time 
to do so before the close of the trance, and 
therefore G. P. had given it to the " return- 
ing consciousness " of Mrs. Piper. Dr. 
Hodgson adds, "that Madame Elisa should 
select some significant circumstance in con- 
nection with living friends or relatives, is 
intelligible; but to suppose that a fragment 
of Mrs. Piper's personality selects it is not 
intelligible— it is not explanatory, and sug- 
gests no order. " (Part xxxiii, p. 372.) 



CHAPTER VIII 

CAUSES OF CONFUSION 

The Phinuit control has now been super- 
seded and has rarely manifested since the 
year 1897. One of the perplexities con- 
nected with this control is that when he 
seemed to find it particularly difficult to give 
correct information he appeared to guess, or 
fish, for facts from the sitters, or sometimes 
"eke out the scantiness of his information 
from the resources of a lively imagination." 
(Part xvii, p. 449.) 

The first explanation which presents itself 
is, of course, that Phinuit was dishonest, but 
Sir Oliver Lodge recognised, even at an early 
stage of the investigation, that there might be 
other reasons for Phinuit's apparent fishing. 
He says : — 

Whenever his supply of information is abundant 
there is no sign of the fishing process. At other times 
it is as if he were in a difficult position — only able 
to gain information from very indistinct or inaudible 
resources, and yet wishful to convey as much infor- 

79 



80 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

mation as possible. The attitude is then that of one 
straining after every clue and' making use of the 
slightest indication whether received in normal or 
abnormal ways : not, indeed, obviously distinguish- 
ing between information received from the sitter and 
information received from other sources. (Part xvii, 
p. 449. The italics are mine.) 

After mentioning that the fishing is most 
marked when Mrs. Piper herself is not well, 
which is what might be expected under any 
hypothesis, he continues : — 

He seems to be under some compulsion not to be 
silent. Possibly the trance would cease if he did 
not exert himself. At any rate he chatters on, and 
one has to discount a good deal of conversation 
which is obviously, and sometimes confessedly, in- 
troduced as a stop-gap. 

He is rather proud of his skill, and does 
not like to be told he is wrong; but when he 
waxes confidential he admits that he is not 
infallible; he does the best he can, he says, 
but sometimes " ' everything seems dark to 
him/ and then he flounders and gropes and 
makes mistakes. . . . Personally I feel sure 
that Phinuit can hardly help this fishing pro- 
cess at times " (p. 450). 

Sir Oliver Lodge then points out that 
although it seems to us that it would be better 
if the "communicator" would desist when 
conditions are unfavourable, rather than pro- 



CAUSES OF CONFUSION 81 

duce this worthless chatter, which has "a 
deterrent effect on a novice to whom that 
aspect is first exposed," yet it may be that, if 
we understood the process better, we should 
change our opinion, and he adds : — 

After all he probably knows his own business best, 
because it has several times happened that after half 
an hour of more or less worthless padding, a few 
minutes of valuable lucidity have been attained. 
(Part xvii, p. 450.) 

With this should be compared a footnote 
in Dr. Hodgson's Reports : — 

On January 14, 1894, G. P. (a communicator) 
wrote, "I don't think it wise for you to ask Dr. 
Phinuit much now he is inclined to try too much at 
times . . . and thinks he hears things when they are 
not close enough to him. He is a mighty good 
fellow, but exaggerates a little occasionally when he 
is dull. Better not tell him I say this." (Part xxxiii, 
P- 369-) 

The statements made by the communi- 
cators as to the modus operandi on the other 
side are interesting, although, of course, there 
is no way in which they can be strictly verified. 
They say that "we all have bodies composed 
of luminiferous ether enclosed in our flesh 
and blood bodies." 

The relation of Mrs. Piper's ethereal body 
to the ethereal world, in which the communi- 
cators claim to dwell, is such that a special 



82 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

store of peculiar energy is accumulated in 
connection with her organism, and this 
appears to them as a " light." Mrs. Piper's 
ethereal body is removed by them, and her 
ordinary body appears as a shell filled with 
this light. " Several communicators may be in 
contact with this light at the same time. . . . 
If the communicator gets into contact with the 
1 light ' and thinks his thoughts, they tend 
to be reproduced by movements in Mrs. 
Piper's organism." 

" Upon the amount and brightness of this 
light the communications depend. ... In all 
cases coming into contact with this 'light' 
tends to produce bewilderment, and if the 
contact is continued too long, or the light 
becomes very dim, the consciousness of the 
communicator tends to lapse completely." 
(Part xxxiii, p. 400.) 

Several pages of Dr. Hodgson's Report 
are devoted to the consideration of the con- 
fusion which occurs and with its probable 
causes. He compares the trance condition 
with the condition which may be observed 
when a person is partially under anaesthetics, 
or recovers consciousness gradually after it 
has been suspended, and he notes that this 
return to consciousness is liable to be accom- 



CAUSES OF CONFUSION 83 

panied by "the manifestation of memories 
vivid in that consciousness, just before it 
ceased to act through its organism, often 
mingled with other ideas which it seems to 
have had just before renewing its manifesta- 
tions " (p. 404). 

It seems very probable that the conditions 
of a communicator during Mrs. Piper's trance 
are very similar to those of ordinary states of 
partial consciousness. Prolonged observation 
of the writing process and the scripts them- 
selves convinced Dr. Hodgson that the in- 
telligence using the hand was " not conscious 
of writing/' and until informed did not know 
in what way thoughts were being registered. 
It is easy to understand under these circum- 
stances that confusions would be liable to 
frequently arise. 

The question may here suggest itself : Is 
this process injurious either to the communi- 
cating spirit or to Mrs. Piper? Under some 
circumstances it might be so, but under the 
prudent care of those, both on this side and 
on the other, who have been conducting the 
experiments, there seems to be no reason 
to suppose the experiences are at all detri- 
mental. It has already been mentioned that 
Mrs. Piper's physical health has improved, 
g 2 



84 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

and since January 1897 the improvement has 
been very marked. At that date a new group 
of controls replaced that of Phinuit. They 
gave themselves the titles of the controls who 
had previously manifested through Mr. Stain- 
ton Moses, known as " Imperator," " Rector," 
and " Doctor," but it seems to be very doubt- 
ful whether they should be identified with 
these. They informed Dr. Hodgson that 
"the light" was much worn by use, and 
offered to repair it as much as possible. After 
having obtained Mrs. Piper's consent (in her 
normal state) Dr. Hodgson agreed to leave 
the control of " the light " in the care of this 
group of intelligences, and there has been no 
reason to regret the decision. " Imperator " 
stated that there were many difficulties in 
the way of clear communication, due chiefly 
to the fact that so many inferior and per- 
turbing communicators had been using the 
medium. 

Most remarkable has been the change in Mrs. 
Piper herself, in her general feeling of well-being, 
and in her manner of passing into trance. . . . She 
passes into trance calmly, easily, gently, and whereas 
there used to be frequently indications of dislike and 
shrinking when she was losing consciousness^ the 
reverse is now the case; she seems rather to rejoice 
at her "departure," and to be in the first instance 
depressed and disappointed when after the trance is 



CAUSES OF CONFUSION 85 

over she comes to herself once more in this "dark 
world " of ours and realizes her physical surround- 
ings (p. 409). 

We have no reason to fear that the con- 
fusion induced by contact with the medium's 
" light/' if not too much prolonged, is to 
the communicators more than a temporary 
experience. 

They on their part enter voluntarily into 
these conditions, and we need not scruple to 
accept this service, which they so gladly offer 
to help and comfort and bring assurance to 
sad and doubting hearts. There can be no 
greater joy for liberated and advancing 
spirits than the joy of service, and if this joy 
involves laying aside, temporarily, the real- 
isation of a higher state and submitting them- 
selves to the experiences of our limitations, 
they are but following the example of the 
highest Spirit known to us in thus taking 
on themselves some of the conditions of their 
still incarnate brothers. 

It seems, however, as if the " control " of a 
medium by the same intelligence, if too pro- 
longed, may have undesirable consequences, 
and may blunt the memory, for a time, for 
the Imperator group have stated that Phinuit, 
who for years was her chief "control," 



86 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

would require to be absent from Mrs. Piper 
for a long time before he would regain con- 
sciousness of his past earth life. (See Journal 
American S.P.R., Vol. Ill, p. 67.) 

We know too little to be able to form any 
certain conclusion on this point, but it is 
worth bearing in mind. We know that among 
incarnate human beings the sense of inde- 
pendence and distinct personal identity varies 
considerably in degree. Some are influenced 
very readily, and are in danger of becoming 
mere echoes of their friends; others are not 
at all liable thus to lose their own distinct- 
ness. Similarly in the case of spirit control 
the effects on the spirit controlling and on the 
medium are likely to be very various. These 
possibilities should be recognised and 
guarded against. As we learn to understand 
better what these phenomena involve we shall 
be better able to deal with them effectively. 
Heedless and purposeless experimentation 
will become rare; those who are physically, 
mentally, or morally unfitted to develop their 
psychic faculties will learn to recognise the 
risk they incur by so doing; and those who 
are fitted, and feel themselves called* to 
develop them will know how to safeguard 
themselves from undesirable consequences. 



CAUSES OF CONFUSION 87 

Hitherto, through ignorance, many mistakes 
have been made, energy has been wasted and 
health of mind and body has sometimes 
suffered, discredit being thereby brought upon 
the whole subject. 

If the psychic faculties belong, as is prob- 
able, to that " ethereal body" which will be 
our normal organ of expression and com- 
munication after death, it is easy to recognise 
that the use of these faculties will demand 
much care and circumspection. In some cases 
they manifest readily and spontaneously, in 
others they can only be evoked by prolonged 
effort ; in either case the experimenter should 
recognise that only those whose mental and 
emotional nature is well balanced, and thor- 
oughly under the control of the will, are 
likely wholly to avoid injurious consequences 
or to obtain the most valuable results. 



CHAPTER IX 

MRS. PIPER'S VISIT TO ENGLAND 

It has been necessary to devote many 
pages to the consideration of Mrs. Piper's 
personality, and the experiences which have 
already been published in connection with 
her, in order that the recent communications 
which purport to come from Mr. Myers may 
be fairly estimated. Those who read these 
communications, having no acquaintance with 
the history of Mrs. Piper's mediumship, 
are not in a position to do justice to the 
evidence they present. The cursory survey 
made in the last three chapters does not, of 
course, claim adequately to represent the 
value of that history, but it is hoped that it 
may in some measure enable the student to 
recognise the importance of the past experi- 
ences in relation to the subject which we are 
considering, namely, the evidence for the 
conclusion that Frederic Myers is attempt- 
ing to communicate from the sphere of his 
present existence. 

88 



MRS. PIPER'S VISIT 89 

Mrs. Piper came to England in November 
1906. The Committee of the S.P.R., having 
detected the cross-correspondences between 
Mrs. Verrall and other automatic writers 
(particularly Mrs. Forbes and Mrs. Holland), 
determined to conduct experiments with 
Mrs. Piper with a view to encouraging 
the development of these cross-correspond- 
eiices, and also with the object of encourag- 
ing, as far as possible, the manifestation of 
the "controls," Henry .Sidgwick, Frederic 
Myers, and Richard Hodgson. 

In Mr. Piddington's report of this group 
of experiments, he says : — 

The Sidgwick control played but a minor part ; the 
Hodgson control showed much activity as a go- 
between . . . but gave little evidence of identity and 
did not, I think, fully maintain the life-like character 
of its earlier manifestations in America; while the 
Myers control, which had formerly been lacking in 
dramatic vitality, displayed a marked advance, par- 
ticularly in the vraisemblance of the personation. 
(Part lvii, p. 19.) 

One hundred and twenty experiments in 
cross-correspondences were made between 
November 15, 1906, and June 2, 1907. 

During this period Mrs. Verrall produced 
63 scripts, Miss Verrall 17, and Mrs. Hol- 
land 3$ (the period in Mrs. Holland's case 



90 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

being extended to July 10). Mrs. Verrall's 
script and Miss Verrall's were done in 
England and Mrs. Holland's in India, and 
we are told that she remained throughout the 
entire series of experiments — 

in absolute ignorance of what was written by tbe 
other automatists. So likewise did Mrs. Piper, unless 
it be that she remembers in her normal state things 
said to her during her trances ; and even then the 
evidential value of the result would be unaffected, 
for all she could have learnt in this was either that 
an experiment, had .been successfully accomplished 
or that it had failed. Mrs, Verrall saw at various 
dates certain portions of Mrs. Holland's and of Miss 
Verrall's script; and Miss Verrall read or was in- 
formed of a few passages in Mrs. Verrall's script. 
Careful note was taken at the time of the extent of 
the knowledge thus normally acquired and of the 
dates on which it was acquired by Mrs. and Miss 
Verrall (p. 22). 

Mrs. Verrall had ten sittings with Mrs. 
Piper; Miss Verrall had five. They did not 
enter the room till the trance had oegun and 
left it before Mrs. Piper had recovered con- 
sciousness; no communications passed be- 
tween them and Mrs. Piper, except at these 
sittings. 

Over one hundred subjects for experiment 
were chosen by the trance personalities, only 
eighteen by the sitters, and of the eighteen 
" only one can be said with certainty to have 
been successfully transferred." 



MRS. PIPER'S VISIT 91 

The successes were therefore almost 
entirely restricted to those experiments in 
which the subjects were chosen by the 
"controls." 

Notes were taken during the experiments 
of all that was said, including remarks made 
by the sitters. 

The trance-script was always kept out of Mrs. 
Piper's sight and taken away at the end of the 
sitting, so that she never saw it or had access to it 
at any time. In her normal condition she neither 
asked for nor received any information whatever 
about what had happened at the sittings, except that 
she was occasionally told that the results were con- 
sidered interesting and promising, and that they 
were of a different nature from what had previously 
been obtained. Since there is strong ground for 
believing that in her normal state she remembers 
absolutely nothing of what has occurred in the trance 
state, it would seem impossible that in the intervals 
between the sittings she could have got up any 
information bearing on them, even had she wished 
to do so. (Part lvii, p. 25.) 

The external features of the trance are 
thus described by Mr. Piddington : — 

Mrs. Piper sits at a table with a pile of cushions 
in front of her, and composes herself to go into 
trance. After an interval varying from two or three 
to ten minutes her head drops on the cushions with 
the face turned to the left and the eyes closed, her 
right hand falling at the same time on to a small 
table placed on her right side. A pencil is put 
between her ringers and the hand proceeds to 
write. . . . After the hand has ceased to write the 



92 MORS J ANITA VITAE ? 

medium remains quiescent for a few minutes. She 
then raises herself slowly and often with difficulty 
from the cushions. When the body is erect she 
begins to speak (p. 24). 

The supposed modus operandi on the 
other side, as far as it can be gathered, is 
explained by Mr. Piddington in a letter in 
reply to an inquiry in the journal of the 
S.P.R., December 1908. 

At the present time and for a good many years 
past Rector, with rare exceptions into which I need 
not enter, acts as intermediary and amanuensis or 
spokesman for both sides ; that is to say, he receives 
messages from the spirits, and by writing or speech 
conveys them to the sitters ; and he receives oral 
messages from the sitters and conveys them to the 
"spirits." In other words, all communication is 
effected through Rector, and he is the only "spirit" 
who communicates or is communicated with directly. 
Rector does not understand Latin, and consequently, 
to make sure that he should transmit correctly 
sounds unfamiliar to him, the Latin words were spelt 
out to him letter by letter. ... I may point out that 
the phenomena show a remarkable consistency in 
that the difficulty of communication is not confined 
to one side, for just as Rector appears to find it 
difficult to transmit unfamiliar words to Myers?, 1 
so Myersj. appears to find it difficult to transmit 
unfamiliar words to Rector (pp. 332, 333). 

It was under the conditions as above 

1 Myersp, Myers v , and Myers „ are the three terms 
used to distinguish the communications which pur- 
port to come from Mr. Myers through Mrs. Piper, 
Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland respectively. 



MRS. PIPER'S VISIT 93 

described that the experiences about to be 
considered occurred. Whether Rector be 
regarded as an independent entity or not, the 
fact remains that this "trance personality" 
is a factor in the experiences which cannot 
be overlooked. 

I propose to deal with only two out of the 
experiments successfully carried out, and I 
would ask the reader to bear in mind that 
the abridgment necessary for the purpose of 
this work must make the incidents appear 
less weighty than they actually are when all 
their details are taken into account. Any 
one who wishes to acquaint himself with the 
evidence more fully should obtain Part lvii 
of Proceedings?- in which full details con- 
cerning the incidents which are about to be 
considered will be found set forth in their 
completeness. 

Since the above chapter was written, 
another Part (Iviii) of Proceedings has been 
issued (June 1909) in which Sir Oliver Lodge 
says with reference to Mrs. Piper : — 

It is not an impertinence, but is justified by the 
special circumstances of the case, to state that the 
family is an admirable one, and that we regard them 

1 To be obtained from the office of the S.P.R., 
20, Hanover Square, London, W., 105. net. 



94 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

as genuine friends. ... It is as the duty specially 
allotted to her that she has learnt to regard her 
long service, now extending over a quarter of a 
century. (Part lviii, p. 136.) 

In relation to the " controls " he says : — 

In the old days the tone was not so dignified and 
serious as it is now : it could in fact then be described 
as rather humorous and slangy ; but there was a 
serious undercurrent constantly present even then ; 
the welcomes and farewells were quaint and kindly — 
even affectionate at times — and nothing was ever 
said of a character that could give offence. . . . 
Great care was taken of the body of the medium, 
both now and previously, by the operating intelli- 
gence (pp. 133, 134). 



CHAPTER X 

THE LATIN MESSAGE 

The complexity of the recent develop- 
ments, which we have now to consider, will 
be inexplicable unless we bear in mind the 
peculiar object in view and also the special 
reasons which made that object difficult to 
effect. 

Communications through mediums of 
various kinds have been the subject of study 
for many years. Frederic Myers' aim was 
not merely to add one more testimony to the 
truth of survival of precisely the same kind 
as the preceding ; his intention was obviously 
to give evidence of a different character; 
evidence which, by its very complexity, 
would preclude the hypothesis of thought 
transference from the incarnate, which, as he 
well knew, is the explanation usually 
accepted by those who are sceptical concern- 
ing the possibility of "messages" coming 
from the "dead." 

95 



96 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

In carrying out the scheme of this difficult 
and complex kind of evidence (which seems 
to have originated on the other side, not on 
this), Myers was further hampered by his 
inability to communicate directly, and the 
consequent necessity of using Rector as an 
intermediary. 

In a letter dated January 1894, Mr. F. W. H. 
Myers spoke of his "unfortunate imperme- 
ability to psychical influence," meaning 
evidently that he was not gifted with the 
faculties known as mediumistic; this "im- 
permeability " seems in some degree to 
persist, so that on the other side he cannot 
control Mrs. Piper directly, but is obliged to 
transmit his messages through the agency of 
Rector, and with the help of other spirits 
more capable of communicating in this way. 

An ardent, almost passionate, desire to 
reach his friends and to complete the work 
he had begun in this life is very apparent 
in these recent communications ; but it is also 
apparent that much restraint is exercised by 
the communicator. 

The "passion" to reach his friends is so 
much force which has to be concentrated 
upon a definite object; it is as if a mill-stream 
had to be passed through a narrow pipe; 



THE LATIN MESSAGE 97 

at moments the pent-up emotion breaks a 
way through, and one seems to hear the beat 
of a human heart, and to feel the quickened 
pulse of the man, Frederic Myers, as he calls 
to his friends across the veil. 

Through Mrs. Holland we hear almost a 
cry, " I have tried so hard to reach you and 
always I seem to try in vain." Through 
Mrs. Piper there is a tone at times of exultant 
joy, but we are also made to realise that the 
difficulties to be encountered are exceedingly 
great, and the success reached is only 
attained as the result of steady persistency 
and immense patience. The strength of 
his affection and the intensity of his will, to- 
gether, have, at length, resulted in produc- 
ing purposeful and evidential communica- 
tions of the special and subtle kind he had 
in view. 

It is impossible to do more than slightly 
indicate their nature, or to convey an 
adequate notion of the impressiveness and 
life-like character of these conversations 
across the border, which are ably reported 
and discussed in Mr. J. G. Piddington's 
record. (Part lvii.) 

It seemed to members of the Council of the 
S.P.R. that cross-correspondences might " be 



98 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

so elaborated as to afford almost conclusive 
proof of the intervention of a third mind, and 
also might produce strong evidence of the 
identity of the communicating mind." (See 
Part lvii, p. 312.) 

With this end in view the following plan 
was devised. A short message was com- 
posed in English and translated into rather 
obscure Ciceronian Latin so that the mean- 
ing would be difficult to discover by any one 
not familiar with Latin, even with the help 
of a dictionary. This Latin message was 
read and spelt out to Rector during Mrs. 
Piper's trance, 1 with the request that he would 
transmit it to Frederic Myers. 

The message was as follows : — 

English version (a). — We are aware of the scheme 
of cross-correspondences which you are transmitting 
through various mediums ; and we hope that you will 
go on with them. Try also to give to A and B two 
different messages, between which no connexion is 
discernible. Then as soon as possible give to C a 
third message which will reveal the hidden con- 
nexion. 

Latin version (b). — Diversis internuntiis quod 
invicem inter se respondentia jamdudum committis, 
id nee fallit nos consilium, et vehementer pro- 
bamus. 

1 Mrs., Piper does not know Latin, and Rector 
states that he also does not know that language. 



THE LATIN MESSAGE 99 

Unum accesserit gratissimum nobis, si, cum duo- 
bus quibusdam ea tradideris, inter quae nullus 
appareat nexus, postea quam primum rem per 
tertium aliquem ita perficias, ut latens illud in prior- 
ibus explicitur (p. 313). 

Mr. J. G. Piddington conducted this 
experiment with Mrs. Piper during the first 
few months, after which Mrs. Sidgwick took 
charge. The English translation was not 
given to Mrs. Piper. 

When the first part of the Latin message 
had been read out to Rector (December 17, 
1906), Mr. Piddington added : — 

1 attach great importance to this message and its 
being correctly transmitted. One object in sending 
this message in Latin is to see whether Myers can 
understand it. To show that, he must send an intelli- 
gent reply to it; not merely such a reply as " I under- 
stand," or " Yes " or " No," but a reply that will show 
that he has grasped the purport of it (p. 314). 

To this Rector replied, "We U.D." 1 

The first nine words as far as committis 
were then pronounced and spelt out letter 
by letter. This portion of the message 
merely states that the investigators had 
recognised the attempt to convey through 
different intermediaries "things which corre- 
spond mutually between themselves," that is 

1 i. e. understand. 
H 2 



100 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

to say, they had noticed a kind of harmony 
in diversity. 

The last word committis was written down 
at 12 o'clock in London, and at that hour, 
precisely, Mrs. Verrall, in Cambridge, sat 
down to write. Her script was in verse, very 
much in the style of Frederic Myers. It 
ends thus : — 

Each single unit played its several part' 
Discoursing- symphony with god-sent art, 
Till the majestic music of the whole 
Throbbed in pulsation : — and the throbbing Soul 
Saw through the sound the burning of the flame 
Felt the lost Presence — to the Presence came. 

(p. 310.) 

The point to be noticed in this script is 
that it embodies the idea of the contribution 
of single parts to form a harmonious whole, 
and thus to reveal a presence — a presence 
which has been lost, but which is to be found 
again by this " music. " 

As Mrs. Verrall was aware of the con- 
tents of the Latin message, we should not 
be justified in attaching any evidential value 
to this appropriate script, were it not for the 
fact that subsequently through Mrs. Piper 
F. W. H. Myers claimed to have given 
"music" to Mrs. Verrall and associated this 
with his answer to the Latin message. 



THE LATIN MESSAGE 101 

On May 6, 1907 (through Mrs. Piper), he 
wrote : — 

My reply was about the poem, and long ago I 
gave the word Music, which came to me as appro- 
priate to my answer, and U.D. [i. c. understanding] 
of the message. . . . You must patch things together 
as best you can. 

Remember we do not give odd or singular words 
without a deep and hidden meaning ... in all our 
messages through both lights there is always more 
or less of the human element in them, which cannot 
be avoided, for your U.D. . . . But you must dis- 
criminate and disect (sic) ... the spiritual from the 
material, and you will see and U.D. much (p. 308). 

Gradually the whole of the Latin message 
was spelt out, and it was finally completed 
on January 2, 1907. 

No immediate reply was given, but assur- 
ances were conveyed that it was, at least 
partly, understood and that a long answer 
was being prepared. Occasionally Mr. 
Piddington was asked to repeat a part of 
the sentence, and he was urged to be patient 
and not to hurry the communicators in their 
reply. 

In order to assist the recognition of cross- 
correspondences by readers of the script, Mr. 
Piddington suggested (through Rector) that 
Mr. Myers should indicate a word or 
sentence which he intended to be part of a 



102 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

cross-correspondence, by drawing a triangle 
inside a circle, as an accompanying sign. 
This idea was accepted, and the sign was 
affixed shortly afterwards to a very interest- 
ing and important script of Mrs. Verrall's, 
a script which formed part of a cross-corre- 
spondence with Miss Verrall and Mrs. Piper 
and embodied a part of Myers' reply to the 
Latin message. 1 

After an anagram on the word "star," on 
January 23, Mrs. Verrall wrote : — 

But the letters you should give to-night are not 
so many, only three 

a. s. t. 

On January 28 Mrs. Verrall's script was 
as follows :— 

Aster [star] 

T€/aas [a sign or wonder] 

The world's wonder 

And all a wonder and a wild desire — 

The very wings of her. 

A WINGED DESIRE 

v7ro7TTe/305 l/3o>s [winged love] 

Then there is Blake 

And mocked my loss of liberty. 



1 On March 6, 1907, Rector said, Myers "will be 
very glad to U.D. that the triangle came through as 
he did see the circle, but could not be sure absolutely 
of the whole triangle ... he also wrote something 
about bird " (p. 339). 



THE LATIN MESSAGE 



103 



But it is all the same thing — the winged desire 

epos 7ro0€a/o5 [passion] the hope that leaves 

the earth for the sky — Abt Vogler for earth. 

too hard that found itself or lost itself — in the sky. 

That is what I want 

On the earth the broken sounds 

threads 
In the sky the perfect arc 
The C Major of this life 
But vour recollection is at fault. 




A D B is the part that unseen completes the arc 

(P- 324)- 

Mrs. Verrall saw no particular meaning in 
this at the time, and when she received a 
letter from Mr. Piddington on February 12, 
telling her that her script of January 12 con- 
tained a "splendid success," she noted this 
in her diary with the comment : — 



104 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

What was good on January 28, T have no idea. 
The script was full of Browning — and wings — and 
oddly capped a wrong quotation from Abt Voglcr 
by an explanatory drawing, which showed that the 
idea was there but not the words (p. 329). 

Tf we label this script of Mrs. Verrall's as 

"A," the next strand in the threefold cord 

of the experiment suggested in the Latin 

message, strand " B," will be found in Miss 

1^. Helen Verrall's scripts. On 

y\ February 3, before she had any 

A a knowledge of the contents of 

Mrs. Verrall's script, her hand 

wrote : — 






The crescent moon, 

remember that [here followed rough 
drawing of crescent moon and star] 
and the star [also a rough drawing of 
a bird and the word bird]. 1 

About a week later, on the 17th, there 





^ 



were further pertinent allusions in her script 
to harmony, "many together." A star was 

1 Vogel is the German for ' bird. ' 



THE LATIN MESSAGE 105 

drawn, and she was told "that was the sign; 
she will understand when she sees it." . . . 
'The mystic three." . . . "And a star above 
it all rats everywhere in Hamelin town. Now 
do you understand, Henry." 

Rats is, of course, an anagram of star, and 
Hamelin town is reminiscent of Browning's 
Pied Piper. 

We therefore find in both these scripts 
the ideas of " Star " and of " Browning," and 
more obscurely, "Vogler" can be traced in 
the word " bird "= Vogel. 

If these coincidences are not attributable 
to chance (and there are not many who will 
suggest this explanation in view of the mass 
of cross-correspondences which exist be- 
tween the sensitives), then it is evident that 
the intelligence at work is both capable of 
exercising considerable ingenuity in render- 
ing the correspondence sufficiently obscure 
not to thrust its significance upon the scribe, 
and sufficiently obvious to be recognised on 
comparison. 

The third strand in this treble harmony, 
strand "C," is supplied by Mrs. Piper, and 
until the clue was given through her, Mr. 
Piddington did not guess that "the Abt 
Vogler quotation had any connexion with 
the Latin messaee." 



106 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

Through Mrs. Piper, on February 17 
(about a week after Miss Helen Verrall had 
received the drawing of the star and bird, 
but before she received the allusion to 
Browning) Myers said, " Look out for Hope 
Star and Browning'' and intimated that his 
reply to the Latin message was partly given. 

After this statement Mr. Piddineton re- 
read Mrs. VerralPs script and recognised its 
significance for the first time. 

Frederic Myers thus plainly showed that 
he understood the suggestion that had been 
made to him that he should try to give to 
<c A " and " B " two different messages, be- 
tween which no connexion is discernible; 
then as soon as possible give to " C " a 
third message which will reveal the hidden 
connexion. 

I will give the episode in Mr. Pidding- 
ton's own words : — 

I then read Browning's Abt Vogler, with which 
I had no previous acquaintance, and immediately 
was struck by the extraordinarily apt answer to the 
second sentence of the Latin message which could 
be extracted from one of the only two passages in 
the poem in which the word " star " occurs. 

This passage runs : — 

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that 
can, 
Existent behind all laws, that made them and lo 
they are \ 



THE LATIN MESSAGE 107 

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed 
to man, 
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth 
sound but a star. 
Consider it well : each tone of our scale in itself is 
nought ; 
It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and all 
is said : 
Give it to me to use ! I mix it with two in my 
thought : 
And there ! Ye have heard and seen : consider 
and bow the head ! 

Were one to search English literature for a quota- 
tion pertinent to the experiment suggested in the 
Latin message it would be difficult to find one more 
felicitous than these lines from Stanza VII of Abt 
Vogler (p. 326). 

Myers explained through Mrs. Piper, at 
a later date, that the Latin message had 
immediately suggested this poem to his mind. 

"It suggested it so strongly," he said, "I rushed 
off to Mrs. V. gave it to her rushed back here and 
although you did not U. D. it. at the time you did 
later." 

When Mr. Piddington had personally 
understood, however, he still pressed for 
further, clearer statements, so as to meet the 
objections which might be raised by doubters, 
and this, at first, evidently caused some dis- 
appointment to Frederic Myers, who himself 
began to doubt whether his aims had been 
recognised. 

He said (February 27, 1907) : — 



108 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

Now I believe that since you sent this message to 
me I have sufficiently replied to your various ques- 
tions to convince the ordinary scientific mind that I 
am at least a fragment of the once incarnate indi- 
vidual whom you call Myers. Is it not so? 

. . . Do you understand from my first utterances 
that I at all U.D. your messages? (p. 332, 333). 

In reply Mr. Piddington explained that he 
did, personally, believe that Myers had 
shown that he understood the Latin, but that 
for the sake of eliciting more evidence he 
had "to play the part of a stupid person, 
who has to have everything explained to 
him." 

To this Myers rejoined : — 

" Oh, I see your point." x 

Although willing to make yet another 
effort. Myers seemed puzzled as to what 
further statements were required, but Mr. 
Piddington finally succeeded in conveying to 
him that he had not made clear through Mrs. 
Piper wherein the appropriateness of the 
Browning poem specially lay. This elicited 
the following statement through her. 

After mentioning (April 8) that he had 
drawn a crescent in addition to a star, he 
said 2 : — 

1 Later, on the same date, he alluded to Brown- 
ing's lines ... as given through Mrs. Verrall and 
another which I referred to before (pp. 332-335). 

2 For the sake of clearness I have here prefaced 



THE LATIN MESSAGE 109 

[F. W. H. M.] I was very much afraid my 
message would not be U. D., therefore I drew the 
star to make sure ... 1 am most anxious to make 
Rector understand about the name of the poem. . . . 
I am very sony Rector does not seem to grasp the 
word as I spell it ... a difficult word to get through 
. . . but I shall try until he U. D. it (pp. 363, 364). 

April 24. After a star had been drawn 
Mrs. Sidgwick remarked : — 

a star — good 

|F. VV. H. M.] Yes 

i remem(ber) Vol 

Vol as it came to my memory 

E. M. S. Is that a poem? 

[F. W. H. M.] Yes Yes 

E. M. S. I don't quite understand 

[F. VV. H. M.] Vol gar 

E. M. S. I think I see. Why are you telling me 
about it? 

[F. VV. H. M.J Because 1 promised 1 would. 

E. M. S. Yes you were going to think over the 
name of the poem. 

[F. VV. H. M.J Yes and that is it. 

E. M. S. What was the poem about? 

[F. VV. H. M.J Vol is right 

E. M. S. You have got something like the name 
of a poem. 

It is not quite right, but if you tell me what is in 
the poem I think 1 shall understand. 

[F. VV. H. M.J Hope Star Horizon 

Horizon 1 comes elsewhere 

the sentences purporting to be messages from Mr. 
Myers by his initials, although this is not done in 
Proceedings, and "Rector's" own words by this 
name. 

1 This word refers to another cross-correspond- 
ence which was successfully carried out, and will be 
dealt with in the next chapter. 



110 MORS JANUA V1TAE? 

Yes, do not get confused, dear Mrs. Sidgwick. 

E. M. S. I will not get confused. 

[F. W. H. M.] V. M. 
V. M. 

(Rector communicating) 

[Rector] Almost right he says 

[F. W. H. M.] (Myers apparently encouraging 
Rector to try again.) Yes, I do wish it very much 
just to keep my promise and complete my U. D. of 
the message. 

(to E. M. S.) You know my interest 

E. M. S. Yes, I know it well. 

[F. W. H. M.] And my desire to prove the 
survival of bodily death 

E. M. S. Yes, I know well. 

[F. W. H. M.] A. B. 

Volugevar 

E. M. S. You've really very neatly got it 

(Rector communicating) 

[Rector] I can't quite repeat the last two letters, 
but he caught me after I left the light and told me 
what it was. R 

[F. W. H. M.] Yes, as Star follows Star so I 
follow that message. 

I gave Rector one more letter 

how do you pronounce 

A. B. t. 

E. M. S. Abt. 



[F. W. H. M. 
E. M. S. Vog 
[F. W. H. M. 



VO (hand inquires of E. M. S.) 
er. 
Correct 



(the hand is tremendously pleased and excited and 
thumps and gesticulates. The impression given is 
that of a person dancing round the room in delight at 
having accomplished something. — Contemporaneous 
note by E. M. S.) 

(Rector communicating) 

[Rector] He pronounced it for me again just as 
you did, and he said Rector, get her to pronounce 



THE LATIN MESSAGE 111 

it for you and you will U. D. he whispered it in my 
ear. 

E. M. S. Just as you were coming out? 

[Rector] Just as 1 left the light 

Vogler 

Yes 

E. M. S. Good 

(Myers communicating) 

[F. \V. H. M.] Now, dear Mrs. Sidgwick, in 
future have no doubt or fear of so called death, as 
there is none 

as there is certainly intelligent life beyond it. 

E. M. S. Yes, it's a great comfort 

[F. W. H. M.] Yes, and I have helped to pro- 
claim it for you all 

E. M. S. You have indeed 

[F. W. H. M.] I wish to continue from time to 
time to help you by given (sic) some sign to assure 
you I am with you. . . . And that my interest is still 
keen and that I hold (?) the deepest affection for 
you at all times, also that I look forward to meeting 
you on this side (pp. 371-374. Date of this sitting, 
April 24, 1907). 

Myers then goes on to state that the un- 
certainty of Abt and the faith which he held 
had recalled to his memory his own experi- 
ence and prompted him to quote that par- 
ticular poem. He adds : — 

I chose that because of the appropriate conditions 
mentioned in it which applied to my own life (p. 376). 

[F. YV. H. M.] Do you remember when I said I 
had passed through my body and returned? 

I tried to give it, and clearly, but was not sure 
that you U. D. 

E. M. S. Do you mean you gave the name of the 
poem? 

[F. W. H. M.] Oh yes. I mean I tried to give 
another part also which referred to completed happi- 



112 MORS JAMJA VlTAEr 

ness in this life, and the possibility of returning to 

the old world again. 

to prove the truth of survival of Bodily death 
these words were lingering in my memory, and I 

gave it as peak followed Star (p. 379). 

After referring to Abt's joy and "sublime 
truth " and " delight " because of his achieve- 
ment, he adds that he believes they will under- 
stand when he tells them he has returned 
to breathe in the old world which, he adds 
significantly, " is not, however, better than 
our new.'"' 

His own understanding of the Latin mes- 
sage he affirmed to have been "very clear," 
the difficulty had been to make his reply clear 
to Rector, and it was at this point that he 
referred (in the passage already quoted) to 
having long ago given the word Music, which 
he said came to him as appropriate to show 
his understanding of the message (see p. 100), 
and he added : — 

There was great joy yet much hope in the lines 
which 1 wish to give you. . . . Do you remember the 
delight and joy ol Abt and then the longing and 
final hope? 

E. M. S. Yes quite 

[F. VV. H. M.J Yes, well, now do you U. D. ? 
(p. 384, 385. Date ol this sitting, May 0, 1907.) 

At a later date a fresh effort was made to 
make the matter still clearer, and Myers 
said : — 



THE LATIN MESSAGE 113 

If the fourth is a Star what would the third be? 

do you U.D. 

In my Passion to reach you clearly I have made 
Rector try to — draw a star for me so there can be 
no mistake. . . . Now are you satisfied ? (p. 388—390. 

Date, May 7, 1907.) 

During May, when Mrs. Piper was staying 
with Sir Oliver and Lady Lodge, at Edgbas- 
ton 5 several further references were made to 
this subject. Sir Oliver Lodge said : — 

Thank you, Myers. I only w r ant to say that I 
think what you did about Browning, Hope and a 
Star, was very fine. 

[F. W. H. M.] I am g-lad to have succeeded in 
making it clear to Rector, but I did have a time of 
it in making him understand my meaning. (Part 
lviii, p. 249. Date May 19, 1907.) 

At a later date a partially successful 
attempt was again made to translate the 
Latin message. I will give a few extracts 
from Sir Oliver Lodge's report, published 
June 1909. 

O. J. L. Do you wish to translate to me Pidding- 
ton's Latin message? 

Yes, you have long since been trying to assimilate 
ideas. 

O. J. L. Cannot read all that. (I thought at the 
time that this was a sentence addressed to me; 
whereas I now realise that it was the beginning of a 
translation. O. ]. L.) 

Sir O. Lodge tells us that at this date he 
"had no previous knowledge of the words 



114 MORS JANUA VITAE> 

of the Latin message" which was thus ren- 
dered by the " control." 

You have been long since trying to assimilate 
ideas, but I wish you to give through Mrs. Verrall 
a proof — such proof of the survival of Bodily death, 
in such a way as to make such prove conclusively 
conclusively the survival of Bodily death. (Part 
lviii, p. 251.) 

Then followed more on the same subject, 
with a definite statement that Myers was 
referring to the Latin message. 

On June 2 Sir Oliver Lodge was told : — 

Myers will open first this day. 

He says when messages came from him he under- 
stands that the language is not always as he would 
speak it, but it gathers so much on the way when it 
is being transmitted it sometimes loses its natural 
tone. Understand? 

Remember, when Piddington gave me his message, 
the special point in it was for me to give definite 
proof through both lights. . . . The first thought I had 
was to repeat a few words or lines of Browning's 
poem, but in order to make it still more definite . . . 
I registered a star, and the lines which I quoted to 
vou before . . . were the most appropriate I could 
find. 

I believe you will understand this to be conclusive, 
that I fully understand and have fairly well translated 
his message (p. 254). 

It will be seen that the rendering is not 
entirely correct, for the message suggested 
that more than two sensitives should com- 
plete the test; and this was evidently under- 



THE LATIN MESSAGE 115 

stood by the " control/' for three were actu- 
ally employed, namely, Mrs. and Miss Ver- 
rall as well as Mrs. Piper. 

As I have already said, this brief survey 
of an important episode in the history of 
psychical research necessarily loses much of 
its impressive and convincing character, 
through being greatly curtailed and shorn of 
many details. The brief quotations made are 
barely sufficient to indicate the character and 
purport of these impressive conversations. 
To do more than this is impossible within 
the compass of a small volume; readers who 
will consult the full reports will find that they 
contain a large amount of important matter 
which it has been necessary to omit here. 

In the next chapter I will make a similar 
brief survey of another episode, passing over 
a great many others which deserve the care- 
ful consideration of students. Among those 
which have to be omitted is an interesting 
incident connected with an inquiry as to 
which of Horace's Odes was most closely 
associated with Myers' former life and 
experience. 



I 2 



CHAPTER XI 

THE PLOTINUS EPISODE 

Mrs. Verrall had been struck with the 
resemblance to Mr. Myers exhibited by the 
personality manifesting through Mrs. Piper 
in her trance, and also with the knowledge 
shown of unpublished portions of her own 
script connected with him; she therefore 
determined, at her next sitting with Mrs. 
Piper, to ask a test question, a question which 
it would be reasonable to suppose that 
Frederic Myers (if he were indeed communi- 
cating) might be able to answer. 

It was decided that this question should 
conform to certain conditions. It must be 
unintelligible to Mrs. Piper herself. It must 
be complex, without being lengthy, i. e. the 
answer should not be capable of being 
expressed in one word or phrase, but " should 
require for completeness allusions to more 
than one group of associations." It should 
concern a subject with which Frederic Myers 

116 



THE PLOTINUS EPISODE 117 

could be proved to have been thoroughly 
familiar; also, "the question should in fact, 
though not in appearance," be connected 
with a range of subjects already alluded to 
in Mrs. VerralFs own script by the " Myers 
control. v (Part lvii, p. 108.) 

The subject for this test question was 
determined upon in the following way. 

At a seance with Mrs. Piper, held on 
January 15, 1907, Myers claimed that he had 
given Mrs. Verrall the words "celestial 
halcyeon (sic) days," and asked : — 

"Have you it? Do you recall it?" 

This exact phrase was not found in her 
script, but a few days later, 1 on January 22, 
the word " supern " was written, and this 
recalled to her mind an earlier script which 
had undoubtedly expressed the idea of 
"celestial halcyon days." This script con- 
tained the following broken but significant 
sentences : — 

For her a message of peace — contemplation on 
high summits — stillness in the air . . . No you 
confuse — the storm and whirlwind consume the 
blue clear space between the worlds, but the supernal 
peace is undisturbed. (Part liii,,p. 64.) 

The reader will at once recognise that the 

1 On the same day Mrs. Piper in the waking stage 
uttered disconnectedly the words "halcyon days." 



118 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

main idea of this script is that of unbroken 
heavenly peace, and that it may be aptly 
expressed in the words, "celestial halcyon 
days." 

This idea is also embodied in the phrase 
aurog ovpavog axvfJLcov, used by Plotinus in 
a passage in which he describes the condi- 
tion best fitted for communion with the 
Spiritual World. 

The Greek phrase may be translated, " the 
very heavens zvaveless " ; it was chosen by 
Frederic Myers as a Greek motto for his 
sonnet on Tennyson, 1 and it is also trans- 
lated (omitting the Greek) in Human Per- 
sonality, Vol. XI, p. 291. It occurs in the 
middle of a paragraph and is rendered, 
"calm be the earth, the sea, the air, and let 
heaven itself be still." 

The following quotation from Mrs. Ver- 
rall's diary will make it quite clear why this 
passage was chosen by her for her test 
question. 

Copy of Mrs. Verrall's Diary of January 
24, 1907 :— 

I propose to -make the following test, wh., if 
F. W. H. M. is really concerned in the trance, ought 
to come off. I will ask for his associations with a 

1 See Fragments of Prose and Poetry, p. 117. 



THE PLOTINUS EPISODE 119 

short Greek sentence to be given to me in English. 
I shall take kcu avrbs ovpavb? a.Kv/x(ov for these reasons — 
(i) My sc[ript] of January 22 had the word 
44 Supern," wh. referred me back yesterday to an 
earlier sc[ript], wh. represents the celestial halcyon 
days wh. the P.[iper] trance F. W. H. M. [i. e. 
Myersp] said he had given me. The phrase c.[elestial] 
h.jalcyon] days seems to me to refer to the idea of 
Plotinus, quoted in H.[uman] P.[ersonality], Vol. 
II, p — [blank left unfilled], and there is a flavour 
of Plotfinus], too, in my Sqript]. (July 3 — /03.) 

(2) The four Greek words are printed as the motto 
to his Tennyson poem in Frag[ments]. 

(3) I think it possible that the same idea is at the 
base of this reference in my sc.jnpt] to the windless 
calms. 

Therefore, (1) would give a chance that the point 
is familiar enough to be remembered. (1) also sug- 
gests that it has been selected as a test. (1) and (2) 
make it evidential, as the words can be proved to 
have had associations for F. W. H. M. not to be 
discovered by Mrs. P.[iper]'s normal powers from 
the printed books. 

I have mentioned these words to no one (p. 141). 

In the event of a complete answer being 
given, Mrs. Verrall therefore expected : — 

1. A translation into English of the words 
aurog oupavog axOfjLWv. 

2. A reference to ■ Myers' poem on 
Tennyson. 

3. A reference to Plotinus and the latter 
part of Human Personality. 

These expectations were all fulfilled, a 
very complete answer being given through 
Mrs. Piper as well as through Mrs. Verrall's 



120 MORS J AM; A VTTAK? 

own script. Moreover, the allusion made to 
Tennyson led her to re-read /;/ Memoriam, 
and thus to discover a probable reason why 
Myers had selected these words as the motto 
for his sonnet on Tennyson — a reason which 
had not previously occurred to her or, 
apparently, to any literary critic. I must 
again quote Mr. Piddington's report on this 
interesting point. 

The continued references in her script to Tenny- 
son, the introduction of In Memoriam, and especially 
the recurrence (on March n) of Tennyson's name 
in connexion with communion with the unseen, led 
Mrs. Verrall not only to believe that there was a 
more definite connexion between Tennyson's In 
Memoriam and the passage from Plotinus than she 
had hitherto recognised, but also to read the poem 
again in the hope of tracing it. . . . On re-reading 
In Memoriam in the light of the suggestion thrown 
out by her script, she was at once struck with the 
resemblance in language as well as in thought 
between the stanzas (section xciv-v) which describe 
the poet's trance and its antecedent conditions and 
the passage in the fifth book of the Enneades where 
Plotinus lays down- the antecedent conditions desir- 
able for ecstasy — the passage, namely, which con- 
tains the words avros ovpavos d/oy/.(ov,and which is trans- 
lated in the second volume of Human Personality 
(pp. 117, 118). l 

1 It cannot be absolutely proved, of course, that 
Frederic Myers had this definite reason for associ- 
ating the words of Plotinus with his sonnet, but it 
seems highly probable. In any case it is an interest- 
ing fact that the script should have led to the recog- 



THE PLOTINUS EPISODE 121 

The question was put on January 29, 1907, 
each Greek word being first pronounced and 
then spelt out to Rector. Mrs. Verrall 
asked : — 

Mrs. V. If I say three Greek words could you say 
what they remind you of? 

I might grasp the words and I might not but I 
could try 

Mrs. V. Yes. You could cither translate thtin 
into English, or tell me of what they make you 
think. 

Do what? 

Mrs. V. Tell me of what they remind you 

Oh yes, of what they remind me, but what have 
they to co with our experiments? 

Mrs. V. I think you have spoken of them- to me 
before, 01 something like them. 

Yes 

When the Greek words had been repeat- 
edly pronounced and carefully spelt out, 
Myers replied : — 

Oh yes, I _\ D. better, farewell F. W. H. M. 
(agitated movement of the hand) 

Adieu R. H. (pp. 141-143.) 

It will be renembered that a similar agita- 
tion was showm when Myers was told that 
the answer to t:ae Latin message had been 
successfully given. 

nition of a close rcsenhlance between this passage 
and Tennyson's In Memoriam, a resemblance which 
appears to not have been previously noted by any 
commentators (see pp. i'S, 122). 



122 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

If, as seems probable, Mr. Myers had 
some time before tried to direct Mrs. Ver- 
rall's attention to the idea of " Celestial 
Halcyon days," i. e. to the thought of 
heavenly calm, it is quite easy to understand 
that the choice of these words, which showed 
that this attempt had at last succeeded, 
should cause a thrill of excitement; for to 
him it must have seemed as an approach to 
the fulfilment of a long-cherished hope, the 
hope, namely, expressed with a note almost 
of despair, in a script written by Mrs. Hol- 
land in January 1904 : — 

Oh if I could get to them — could only give you 
the- proof positive that I remember — recall — know — 
continue. 

We cannot be surprised if the recogni- 
tion, that a great opportunity was now 
afforded him of proving that he did in- 
deed " remember," awakened such strong 
emotions of hope and joy as tc react in agita- 
tion on the instrument through whom he was 
communicating. 

It is impossible to adequately convey in 
a summary like this the feeling of tension, 
of strenuousness, which pervades the com- 
munications in which Myers answered the 
" test question " concerning the Greek 



THE PLOTINUS EPISODE 123 

words; but a sympathetic reader of the report 
cannot fail to recognise this. It is as if the 
communicator was exercising great self- 
restraint; was holding back intense, almost 
painfully intense, eagerness and emotion, 
which at moments find vent in exclamations 
such as "Amen, Amen, at last." The life- 
like character of the whole episode is very 
striking : this cannot be reproduced. I must 
content myself with briefly indicating the 
main points in Frederic Myers* reply. 

Through Mrs. Piper, who, be it remem- 
bered, does not know Greek, the Greek 
quotation was paraphrased as a "cloudless 
sky beyond the horizon " ; the Greek words 
were also definitely associated with Tenny- 
son both in Mrs. Verrall's and Mrs. Piper's 
script. Through the latter Myers said : 
" I thought of Tennyson directly she gave 
me the words. " Also through Mrs. Piper 
allusions were made to Arthur Hallam, and 
through Mrs. Verrall to the poem dedicated 
to Arthur Hallam, viz. In Memoriam. 
Through Mrs. Piper remarkable and subtle 
references were made to a passage in 
Human Personality, which will be found 
close to that in which Myers has translated 
the words of Plotinus; and, finally, again 



124 MORS JANIIA VITAE? 

through Mrs. Piper, came the distinct state- 
ment, k * say to Mrs. Verrall Plotinus. ,, " Plo- 
tinus is my answer " 

In addition to the interest attaching to 
so full a reply, this incident also involved a 
particularly striking cross-correspondence on 
the subject of Tennyson's poem, Crossing 
the Bar. 

On February 26 (1907) Mrs. VerralFs hand 
wrote : — 

(xvtos ovpavo? aKVfxwv 

I think J have made him [probably Rector] under- 
stand. ... I think I have got some words from 
the poem written down — if not stars and satellites, 
another phrase will do as well. And may there be no 
moaning at the bar — my Pilot face to face (p. 114). 

And on March 6 — 

I have tried to tell him of the calm, the heavenly 
and earthly calm, but I do not think it is clear. I 
think you would understand if you could see the 
record. Tell me when you have understood 

Calm is the sea — 

and in my heart if calm at all, if any calm a calm 
despair. That is only part of the answer — just as it 
i> not the final thought. The Symphony docs not 
close upon despair — but on harmony. So does the 
poem. Wait for the last word (p. 115). 

The Communicator evidently alludes to 
Tennyson's In M cmoriam and to some other 
poem. It is open to question whether the 
sentence, "so does the poem," refers to 



THE PLOTINUS EPISODE 125 

Browning's Pros-pice or to Tennyson's 
Crossing the Bar; both may be said to close 
11 on harmony " ; probably both are meant, but 
there is a point which connects the words 
directly with Crossing the Bar. 

If the reference is to Tennyson's Cross- 
ing the Bar the sentence "wait for the last 
word" becomes very significant; the last 
word of this poem of Tennyson's is the word 
"bar." 

Now on March 6, during the waking stage 
of the trance, Mrs. Piper said : — 

Moaning at the bar when I put out to sea. . . . 
I'm glad I've entered — (p. 150). 

and then a little later twice she repeated 
"Arthur Hallam." And on March 13, 1907, 
Myers said : — 

I referred to 




J. G. P. Well? 
saying I had crossed it 
yes did she U. D. ? 
J. G. P. You said it to whom? 
both lights. ... 

J. G. P. I have not looked yet. I purposely did 
not look. 



126 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

yes, I U. D. why. , . . 

1 saw Mrs. Verrall and gave her a sign like this. 
[Here two bars were drawn.] 

and said I have crossed it 

... I thought she might get a glimpse of my 
U.D. [i. e. understanding] of her Greek. 

J. G. P. I have a message from her to you; but 
before I give it will you describe in a word the thing 
which you said you crossed? 

BAR. . . . 

[The question was then asked : — ] 

Did Mrs. V. draw a bar? 

J. G. P. Shall I look? 

Yes 

J. G. P. Then wait please. 

let me call Myers first, I want him to hear (a pause) 

(Myers communicating) yes. are you here? . . . 
did she draw a 

(a figure intended to represent a bar was again 
drawn at this point, but so faintly that it cannot be 
reproduced) 

(Meanwhile J. G. P. had opened for the first time 
the envelopes containing Mrs. Verrall *s script of 
March n and 12 and read the contents.) 

J. G. P. I cannot see that she did. 

She D 

J. G. P. (interrupting) Oh, Myers, one moment. 

yes 

J. G. P. I forgot. She wrote, "may there be 
no moaning at the bar," but she didn't draw a bar. 

When I put out to sea 

J. G. P. Yes. 

Why didn't you say so before. 

J. G. P. It was some days ago she wrote it, and 
I was looking out for a picture. 

I am not so sure that I gave her this full impres- 
sion, but I did quote those lines to her. I also 
quoted them to this light (pp. 154, 155). 

A little further on Myers again said he 



THE PLOTINUS EPISODE W 

had drawn a bar for her, and had said 
"Arthur Hallam." 

Mr. Piddington understood this to refer 
to Mrs. Verrall, and replied : — 

" You wrote ' Pilot face to face/ but not 
Arthur Hallam, so far as I remember." 

To this Myers answered, "Yes. No, I 
mean I gave it to the spirit of this light while 
it was returning " (p. 156). 

This agrees entirely with what had 
occurred. It was in the waking stage that 
Mrs. Piper pronounced the name Arthur 
Hallam. 

Careful consideration of this cross-corre- 
spondence must lead to the conclusion that 
the intelligence communicating through Mrs. 
Piper was identical with the intelligence con- 
trolling Mrs. Verrall's script; each script 
shows knowledge of what is contained in the 
other. This incident is a striking contribu- 
tion to the mass of evidence which exists for 
a purposeful directing mind distinct from 
that of the sensitives. 

There are many short incidents recorded 
in Part lvii, and one long one which is very 
ably analysed by Mr. Piddington in a sec- 
tion of some forty pages under the heading, 
"Light in the West." It is too complex to 
deal with here, and in order to properly 



128 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

appreciate it the student should be equipped 
with a knowledge of classical literature, for 
many of its allusions are classical. 

The main subject for the cross-corre- 
spondences involved seems to have arisen 
out of the last lines of section xcv of In 
M emoriam, which is closely associated with 
oLurog ovpavlg axufxwi/. The lines are these : — 

And East and West without a breath 
Mixt their dim light, like life and death, 
To broaden into boundless day — 

The conception underlying this passage 
is obviously the union of opposites in the 
reconciling calm of heavenly light. 

Perhaps it is only the mystic or the student 
of mysticism who, will grasp the significance 
of the expression "the union of opposites/' 

Professor William James in his book on 
the Varieties of Religious Experience, refer- 
ring to the mystical state, says : — 

Looking back on my own experiences they all con- 
verge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot 
help ascribing some metaphysical significance. The 
keynote of it is invariably a reconciliation. It is as 
if the opposites of the world, whose contradictariness 
and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, 
were melted into unity. Not only do they as con- 
trasted species belong to one and the same genus, 
but one of the species, the nobler and better one, 
is itself a genus and so soaks up and absorbs its 
opposite into itself. This is a dark saying, 1 know, 



THE PLOTINUS EPISODE 129 

when thus expressed in terms of logic, but I cannot 
wholly escape from its authority, I feel as if it must 
mean something like what the Hegelian Philosophy 
means, if one could lay hold of it clearly. Those 
who have ears to hear let them hear ; to me the living 
sense of its reality only comes in the artificial mystic 
state of mind. 

Perhaps it was this reconciliation of 
opposites in the light of Truth that Frederic 
Myers was trying to suggest. It is some- 
thing of this sort, in any case, that Mr. J. G. 
Piddington seems to have discovered in the 
scripts. 

He says, "the parent idea" of this 
episode "from which all the other ideas 
were developed " by association, was " the 
Union of East and West." 

This idea he traces in references made in 
various scripts to Dante's Purgatorio, to 
Tennyson's Maud and to Hercules as the 
classical type of the union of East and West. 
The words " East and West " also occur in 
Human Personality in connexion with the 
idea of unification, and the passage may per- 
haps lend some further support to Mr. Pid- 
dington's interpretation of the allusion. 
After speaking of the impossibility of find- 
ing a scientific basis for religion in the early 
ages of the world, Myers says : — 



130 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

What could best be done was to enforce softie few 
great truths — as the soul's long upward progress, 
or the Fatherhood of God — in such revelations as 
East and West could understand. Gradually Science 
arose, uniting the beliefs of all peoples in one scheme 
of organised truth, and suggesting — as has been 
said — that religion must be the spirit's subjective 
reaction to all truths we know (Vol. II, p. 275). 

The conclusions to which this class of 
evidence points have been forcibly summed 
up by Sir Oliver Lodge in an article in The 
Church Family Newspaper, Nov. 5, 1909. 
He writes : — 

What we are quite clear about is that ingenuity of 
a high order has been at work, even though it be only 
deceptive ingenuity— nothing that can with any justi- 
fication be styled "imbecility" — and that, to what- 
ever agency the intelligence may ultimately have to 
be attributed, intelligence and scholarship and in- 
genuity are being very clearly and unmistakably 
displayed. Of that we have no doubt whatever. The 
scholarship, moreover, in some cases singularly 
corresponds with that of F. W. H. Myers when 
living, and surpasses the unaided information of any 
of the receivers. 

Of that, too, I have myself no doubt ; and some of 
us have supposed that all this would gradually 
become clear to a careful reader. . . . We are work- 
ing in accordance with our best and ripest judgment. 
That we are working with assistance from, and in 
co-operation with, the other side is a matter on which 
there is a very legitimate difference of opinion, and 
it is only one of several hypotheses ; but however that 
may be, and whatever reception our .ecords meet 
with, in that work we shall continue, whether they 
will hear or whether they will forbear. 



CHAPTER XII 

CONCLUSION 

Any one who has taken the trouble to con- 
sider attentively the selection of incidents 
here dealt with will, I venture to hope, 
recognise that they cannot be lightly put 
aside, but that they, at least, constitute a 
case for further consideration and inquiry. 

In the present chapter I do not propose 
to deal any further with the question of 
evidence, but briefly to consider certain de- 
ductions which may legitimately be drawn 
from these communications, on the assump- 
tion that they proceed from Frederic Myers. 
I wish to ask : Supposing for the sake of 
argument, that the identity of the com- 
municator is established, what is his " mes- 
sage' ' ? What may we gather from these 
communications concerning the next stage of 
existence ? 

To begin with, they indicate, not only that 
Frederic Myers has survived bodily death 

K 2 I3 1 



132 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

(as he was persuaded he would do), but also 
that he retains his former characteristics, and 
that the subjects which occupied his thoughts 
and energies in this life still interest him in 
his present state. 

The importance of this deduction can 
hardly be overestimated, for it carries with 
it inferences of great practical value in rela- 
tion to our present and future life. We will 
therefore consider the point a little more at 
length. 

Frederic Myers' earthly life from early 
childhood was a life full of ideation. He 
lived in ideas, which to him became ideals, 
and it is noteworthy that the Myers com- 
munications deal little with actions or details 
of every-day life, but almost entirely with 
ideas. 

That the communications are stamped 
with the mental characteristics of Frederic 
Myers there can be no manner of doubt. 

On this point Mr. J. G. Piddington 
writes : — 

On the problem of the real identity of this direct- 
ing mind — whether it was a spirit or group of co- 
operating spirits, or the subconsciousness of one of 
the automatists, or the consciousness or subcon- 
sciousness of some other living person — the only 
opinion which I can hold with confidence is this : that 



CONCLUSION 133 

if it was not the mind of Frederic Myers it was one 
which deliberately and artistically imitated his mental 
characteristics. (Part lvii, pp. 242, 243.) 

Therefore, if we accept these communica- 
tions as from him, we have proof positive 
that death has not destroyed the special 
characteristics which distinguished the man 
and the writer, endearing him to a wide circle 
of friends and readers. 

The script exhibits the activity of the same 
earnest, ardent nature, and the tastes of the 
classical scholar and lover of literature are 
conspicuous in the many references to Greek, 
Latin, and English authors. In his auto- 
biography {Fragments of Prose and Poetry) 
he tells us that on his sixth birthday his 
father began to teach him Latin, and a few 
months later gave him the First /Eneid of 
Virgil. 

The scene is stamped upon my mind : the anteroom 
at the parsonage with its floor of bright matting and 
its glass door into the garden, through which the 
flooding sunlight came, while I pored over the new 
revelation with awestruck joy (p. 6). 

This joy of the child of six years old 
developed into a growing passion for one 
after another of the Greek and Latin poets. 

From ten to sixteen, he says, I lived much in the 
inward recital of Homer, ^Eschylus, Lucretius, 



134 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

Horace and Ovid. The reading of Plato's Gorgias at 
fourteen was a great event; but the study of the 
Phcedo at sixteen effected upon me a kind of con- 
version (p. 17). 

It is entirely consistent that the communi- 
cations of one so imbued with classical 
literature, and so influenced by it, should be 
full of allusions to classical writers. Plato, 
Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Plotinus, Homer, 
Euripides, Dante, Wordsworth, Browning, 
and Tennyson, are all mentioned (the two 
latter very frequently), sometimes through 
Mrs. Piper, sometimes through other 
sensitives. 

We are thus led to the conclusion that 
those who die to the physical environment 
do not necessarily forget and leave behind 
those things which interested them during 
their life here. What is true of Frederic 
Myers applies equally to others, and this 
affords a clue, of general application, to the 
life beyond. 

But have we any means of ascertaining 
which interests are most likely to persist, 
and which will probably fade? 

Some indications on this point may be 
gathered from the Piper records; for 
instance, on one occasion inquiry having 
been made by a sitter for a particular friend, 



CONCLUSION 135 

Phinuit replied that he could not find her 
as she had "grown too far away from the 
world." " Do they then forget this world ? " 
he was asked, and to this he answered : — 

All that is material is forgotten as of no con- 
sequence. It is all a spiritual growth, and spiritual 
growth here will help you there. (Part xxi, p. 115.) 

Experiences after death will probably 
differ widely. We cannot doubt that those 
who have turned the pursuits of this life 
into means of spiritual progress will have a 
fuller, richer memory of the past than others 
who have only lived on the surface of life 
here and have harvested little that is worth 
remembering. 

If these experiences testify to their con- 
tinued interest in matters which occupied 
them during their earthly life, still more 
emphatically do they assure us that love and 
friendship continue unabated, and that these 
liberated spirits are moved by enduring 
affection to help us in our need. We have 
seen how eagerly Frederic Myers reached 
" over the bar " to assure his friends of his 
faithful remembrance of them. In his work 
on Human Personality he has said : — 

What can there be at once more intimate and more 
exalting than the waking reality of converse with 



136 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

beloved and enfranchised souls? So shall a man 
feel the ancient fellow-labour deepened, the old kin- 
ship closer still ; the earthly passion sealed and 
hallowed by the irreversible judgment of the blest. 
(Human Personality, Vol. II, p. 259.) 

And, as if to endorse this from the other 
side of death, we find him speaking in these 
communications of his " passion " to reach 
those he had left on earth, and persistently 
directing their attention to the passages in 
his book in which he had referred to the 
Dialogue (in the Symposm?n) respecting 
love, a dialogue in which love is described 
as the bond between heaven and earth. 

In measure as we realise the consolation 
involved for us in these "messages," in 
that degree must we also recognise the 
obligations devolved on us by the truths they 
contain. It rests not alone with them, but 
to a great extent also with us, to facilitate 
intercourse, to deepen the fellow-labour, 
to draw closer the old kinship. It rests 
with us to furnish the conditions which make 
communion and communication possible and 
profitable. 

If we forget them, or persistently think 
of them as dead, or if we allow selfish lamen- 
tation to darken our mental horizon, or suffer 
the higher life to be crowded out by the 



CONCLUSION 137 

" cares and riches and pleasures of this life," 
we raise barriers to their approach, which 
they may be unable to remove or surmount, 
and by so doing we not only dwarf our own 
lives and narrow our outlook, but we may 
also grieve and disappoint them, and may 
even hinder and disturb their progress as 
well as their peace. 

That they can be affected by our thoughts 
concerning them is obviously indicated by 
many communications: thought is magnetic, 
and attracts thought. 

When we think of our friends we appar- 
ently, by so doing, enable them 'to become 
more aware of us, and, in some way, which 
we at present cannot explain, to see us more 
clearly. They see into our minds when our 
minds are occupied with thoughts of them/ 

1 Frederic Myers seems to have been aware of the 
publication of his book after his death and to have 
felt the effect of the many thoughts of him that 
were set in motion. He says : — 

"The publication of the book was a tremendous 
help to me — and to others of us — It set new 
strength — new power free in our direction — and even 
blind interest — unintelligent thoughts can be an 
assistance." (Part lv, p. 204.) 

The following conversation between Dr. Hodgson 
and Mrs. Piper's "control," "George Pelham, r ' will 
also be read with interest in this connexion : — 

Friend. George, you said you had been following 



138 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

and it seems likely that in this way they 
become cognisant of much of our condition 
and even of our physical environment, and 
probably they can thus still participate both 
in our interests and delights, and in some 
measure in our sorrows also. Obviously 
this affords a strong incentive to cultivate 
those spiritual virtues which will make their 
association with us a joy and not a grief, a 
gain and not a loss; by our courage, our 
faith, our hope, and, above all, by our love, 
we can still bless those whose love still 
blesses us. 



Jim. Do you know where he is now, or where he 
went? 

G. P. He has gone to see his friend Fenton (cor- 
rect) ; saw him not three quarters of an hour ago, as 
near as I can tell by the time. 

R. H. Well, it was more than three quarters of an 
hour. 

G. P. That I can't specify. 

Friend. George, do you know what Fenton and 
Jim were talking about? 

G. P. About this very subject and about me 
(correct). (Part xxxiii, p. 424.) 

On another occasion G. P. told Dr. Hodgson that 
he would try to see him if he (R. H.) would "send 
out his spiritual body to him (G. P. ) as much as 
possible." 

Presumably this implied that Dr. Hodgson must 
direct his thoughts to G. P. if he wished to be seen 
bv him. 



CONCLUSION 139 

As one lamp lights another, nor grows less, — 
So Nobleness enkindleth Nobleness. — Lowell. 

In this life of continued friendship 
Frederic Myers, Henry Sidgwick, Edmund 
Gurney, Richard Hodgson, seem to be still 
co-operating for the same ends. The hope 
has been cherished for many ages that 
friendships may be thus continued, but, at 
times, this hope has almost flickered out in 
the fogs of materialistic philosophy. The 
certainty that love and friendship remain 
unbroken, and that they may grow and 
develop after death, affords not only com- 
fort in bereavement, but a powerful incentive 
to loyalty, endurance, and all the nobler 
fidelities that make life worthy. There is 
nothing which affection cannot endure if the 
soul is assured that the partings caused by 
death are only a brief episode in a life of 
unending fellowship. 

This conviction ought to produce a great 
change in men's thoughts of death and in 
their funeral customs. "There is no sadder 
mistake than to imagine that by mourning 
for the dead their state of happiness is in- 
creased — Love they desire, but not lamen- 
tation." (Part lv, p. 217.) 

This and other messages remind us that 



140 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

we can do much to keep open the avenues 
for their approach by reserving spaces for 
quietness, for thought of them and with 
them, we and they can still grow together and 
be enriched by each other's sympathy, com- 
panionship and influence. 

Mrs. Holland was told that, "Many a 
thought that seems to come unprompted is 
really whispered by an influence near at 
hand." (Part lv, p. 211.) But a mind pre- 
occupied mainly with the material things 
which they have forgotten will be likely to 
be deaf to these whispers from the Unseen. 
Seers have always recognised that quietness, 
stillness of body, mind and spirit are 
essential to the best and most perfect kind 
of communion. 

As we have already seen (Chapter XI) this 
condition of stillness is the leading idea in 
one of the most interesting series of com- 
munications, on a subject originally chosen, 
apparently, by Mr. Myers himself. 

The idea is connected with the test 
question which was put to Mr. Myers 
through Mrs. Piper and her control " Rector." 
In this test question Mrs. Verrall asked 
him what associations he attached to the 
three Greek words aurog ovpavo$ axvtuvv 



CONCLUSION 141 

(The very heavens waveless). The reader 
will remember that she was led to the choice 
of these words as the subject for her ques- 
tion by a passage in her own script which 
had embodied the idea of " Supernal peace 
undisturbed/' and by Mr. Myers saying, 
through Mrs. Piper, that he had already 
given to her the thought of "celestial 
halcyon days/' 

The passage in Human Personality which 
embodies this thought from Plotinus, runs 
thus :— 

So let the soul that is not unworthy of that Vision 
contemplate the Great Soul; freed from deceit and 
every witchery, and collected into calm. Calm be the 
body for her in that hour, and the tumult of the 
flesh ; ay, all that is about her, calm ; calm be the 
earth, the sea, the air, and let Heaven itself be still. 
Then let her feel how into that silent heaven the 
Great Soul floweth in. . . . And so may man's soul be 
sure of Vision, when suddenly she is filled with light; 
for the light is from Him and is He ; and then surely 
shall one know His presence when, like a god of old 
time, He entered into the house of one that calleth 
him, and maketh it full of light. . . . And how may 
this thing be for us? Let all else go. (Vol. II, 
p. 291.) 

A careful study of the whole episode from 
its earliest incipience to its close, suggests 
that Frederic Myers was anxious to draw 
attention to the idea of stillness as a con- 



142 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

dition for communion with the unseen world, 
and that he had with this object himself 
started the associations which determined 
Mrs. VerralPs choice of this quotation as the 
basis of her experiment. 

The message is one greatly needed : the 
rush of modern life is increasing, and it is 
hard, very hard, to withstand its influence, 
and to secure sufficient leisure for listening 
to the unseen speakers; our very eagerness 
for communications may prevent com- 
munion. 

Peace for the Seer who knew that after — after — 
the earthquake and the fire and the wind, after, after, 
in the stillness comes the voice that can be heard. 
(Part lvii, p. 115.) 

The voiceless communing and unseen Presence 

felt 

The Presence that is in the lonely hills (p. 145). 

These things, and more besides, were 
doubtless said as a part of Frederic Myers' 
scheme for self-identification, but not, I 
think, without reference to the teaching they 
convey to all who would realise the condi- 
tions for lofty and inspiring intercourse with 
liberated spirits. The central thought of 
this particular group of communications is 
finely embodied by Tennyson in his In 
Memoriam, in the familiar passage : — 



CONCLUSION 143 

How pure at heart and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold 
Should be the man whose thought would hold 

An hour's communion with the dead. 

In vain shalt thou, or any, call 
The spirits from their golden day, 
Except, like them, thou too canst say, 

My spirit is at peace with all. 

They haunt the silence of the breast, 

Imaginations calm and fair, 

The memory like a cloudless air, 
The conscience as a sea at rest : 

But when the heart is full of din, 

And doubt beside the portal waits, 

They can but listen at the gates, 
And hear the household jar within. 

If we are warranted in recognising a signi- 
ficant message in the incident connected with 
oturog ouf>avo$ axujaaw we are also clearly 
bound to find one in the selection of Abt 
Vogler as the subject for Myers' answer to 
the Latin message. In this connexion he 
said : — 

: ' The uncertainty of Abt and the faith 
which he held . . . brought to my memory 
the experience I have had myself." (Part 
lvii, pp. 374, 375.) 

Thus Frederic Myers appropriated the 
thoughts in this poem as his own, and re- 
minded Mrs. Sidgwick of the "joy" and 
"sublime truth," which in his own case had 



144 MORS JANUA VITAE ? 

followed upon doubt and disappointment, 
saying, " I am trying to explain to you his 
doubts and fears — then his acceptance of 
God; yes, and faith in Him" (p. 375). In 
answer to the inquiry, " Why that poem was 
so appropriate as an answer to the Latin 
message"? he replied — 

I chose that because of the appropriate conditions 
mentioned in it which applied to my own life . . . and 
nothing I could think of so completely answered it 
to my mind as those special words, (p. 376.) 

And Rector added : — 

He says other words about disappointment and 
how he hoped. . . . 

joy and sublime truth and delight because of his 
achievement 

do you U. D. what he is talking about? . . . 

Oh I do not, R. but I will register what he says. 

Peace Heaven made whole sky and Heaven meet. 

Then Myers broke in with the words : — 

I believe you will [understand] when I tell you 
I have returned to breathe (sic) in the old world, 
which is not, however, better than our new (pp. 
379, 380). 

And further : — 

Listen. In all our messages through both lights 
(mediums) there is always more or less of the human 
element in them which cannot be avoided . . . but 
you must discriminate and disect (sic) the spiritual 
from the material and you will see and U. D. much. 
There was great joy and much hope in the lines 
which I was to give you. (p. 384.) 



CONCLUSION 145 

He also said with reference to the poem : — 

I tried to give another part also which referred to 
completed happiness in this life, and the possibility 
of returning to the old world again to prove the truth 
of the survival of bodily death. 

The whole of Abt Vogler should be read 
attentively in order to understand the full 
significance of his choice, and with this may 
be compared the following from Mrs. Hol- 
land's script which came in the name of Mr. 
Myers : — 

If it were possible for the soul to die back into 
earth life again I should die from sheer yearning to 
reach you ... to tell you that all that we imagined is 
not half wonderful enough for the truth — that immor- 
tality instead of being a beautiful dream is the one 
the only reality — is the strong golden thread on which 
all the illusions of all the lives are strung. (Part lv, 

P- 233-) 

If you saw me as I am now you would not recog- 
nise me in the least — 

All I could never be — all men refused in me 

This I was worth to God whose wheel the pitcher 

shaped — 1 
I appear now as I would fain have been. (Part lv, 
P 215.) 

What is the essence of this message but 
the assurance that our hopes shall not be 
disappointed? "that eye hath not seen, nor 
ear heard, neither hath it entered into the 

1 Browning : Rabbi ben Ezra, 



146 MORS JANUA VITAE? 

heart of man to conceive " those things which 
are prepared for souls whose affections are 
sanctified by the love of the Highest? 

The Symposium episode carried with it 
the assurance of love's potency, love's power 
to surpass all obstacles, "triumphing over 
Death, and Chance, and thee, O Time ! " 

The Plotinus episode reminds us of the 
steadfast calm, the heavenly peace in which 
we must seek to possess our souls if we would 
inherit the beatitude of the peacemakers and 
realise unbroken fellowship with sons of 
God in the many mansions of our Father's 
house. 

And the Abt Vogler incident conveys the 
promise of fulfilment, the affirmation that — 

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good 
shall exist; 
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, 
nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for 
the melodist 
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 

With this thought of fulfilment I bring 
my task to an end, with the consciousness 
that it has been but inadequately carried out, 
but not without the hope that those minister- 
ing spirits who are sent forth to cheer and 
encourage us, as we grope for light in a 



CONCLUSION 147 

world so full of mystery, and for many so 
full of pain, may be able to use this little 
work, inadequate though it be, as ,a means 
by which to direct some truth-seekers into 
a path which may lead them, as it has already 
led many, into the realisation of "great joy" 
and "much hope." 



L' ENVOI 



ON TIME 

Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race; 

Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours, 
Whose speed is heavy as a plummet's pace; 

And glut thyself with what thy womb devours, 
Which is no more than what is false and vain, 

And merely mortal dross; 

So little is our loss, 
So little is thy gain ! 

For, whenas each thing bad thou hast entombed, 
And last of all thy greedy self consumed, 
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss 
With an individual kiss, 
And Joy shall overtake us like a flood; 
When every thing that is sincerely good 
And perfectly divine, 
With Truth, and Peace, and Love, shall ever 

shine 
About the supreme throne 

Of Him, to whose happy-making sight alone 
When once our heavenly-guided soul shall climb, 

Then, all this earthly grossness quit, 

Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit, 
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, 
O Time !— Milton. 



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